Mega road trip - Day 24

Today we drove from Revelstoke, BC to Banff, AB on the Trans-Canada Highway (Route 1).  The road goes through Glacier National Park, Yoho National Park, and Banff National Park - Several hours of driving through the most amazing mountain scenery on the continent.  The whole day was just spend looking around as we're driving and going "Wow - look at that!"

Pictures simply can't capture the scale of the scenery.

We did take a couple of short walks - in a temperate rain forest with giant 500 year old cedars on the west side of Glacier National Park, a giant skunk cabbage and Equisetum swamp with abundant bear sign (they like the skunk cabbage flowers evidently), and the area around Lake Louise and Moraine Lake in Banff.  Lake Louise and Moraine Lake are incredibly beautiful areas.

We also saw some wildlife - a moose crossing the road which was too quick for us to photograph and a black bear foraging.

Oh yeah, we were almost killed as well.  In Glacier National Park, we were coming down a very long hill and they were stopping cars for a construction zone.  We were the second car stopped and suddenly the construction guy starts screaming "Move, move, move!" and was backing up as fast as he could (he had one leg and a crutch but moved very fast).  I glance in my rearview mirror and see a tractor trailer barreling down at a high rate of speed right for us.  Luckily I moved the car away quickly enough as the runaway truck missed us by inches.  Truck couldn't stop for another couple hundred feet down the road.  No one was hurt but it was close.  Makes you appreciate life when you narrowly escape tragedy like that.

Other than that it was a good day.  The view from our hotel balcony in Banff was pretty nice as well.