I'm liking this place

The three-hour drive from Revelstoke to Banff Park was a delight in itself…..the highway planners seem to have designed the road to race directly towards a massive outcropping of rock and then at the last second curved it around the base to give you a view of yet another of the spectacular Canadian Rockies…which I think are far more impressive than the ones south of the border. We arrived in Lake Louise at the visitor’s center and “village,” an overrun-with-tourists place in which to stand in line for anything to eat, and shop in stores who seem to know you were coming….We drove up to the actual lake where our hotel was and began what turned out to be what can best be classified as “One of the best travel days in all our trips.” To start with, we are staying at the Chateau Lake Louise….the iconic hotel of the Canadian Rockies….it is THE classic hotel, and I have seen photos of it from behind with the turquoise-colored lake in the background all my life…..I never dreamed of staying here, but you can’t travel or work as a travel agent without seeing that photo innumerable times….So here I must say that I didn’t pay what we “In the trade” call, “Rack Rates.”….I am too cheap to pay $450 per night, plus tax, when I can still visit, stay someplace else, and avoid the credit card shock at the end of the month….But there are things in the industry called: “Travel agent rates.” Places that still see the travel agent as a positive tool in the travel business…so to put it mildly, we got a deal. We drove up to the hotel and were met by the valet parking guy who explained that we basically had two options…we could use valet parking for $35 a night or we could park it ourselves for $30 a night…there is an unsupervised lot about ¼ mile down the road…I was saying I didn’t want to leave my new Prius down there, when he said: “Oh…sorry, I didn’t notice that it was a hybrid….The hotel offers free valet parking for hybrids…”…I’m liking this place already. At the front desk the clerk said that our room was ready although it was still very early, and that we were booked into a room with a premier view of the lake…no hillside or your back window here…but a full-on, front view smack dab in the middle of the lake view. She looked at the rate and said…”Oh, and they gave you a really good rate too.” I smiled…I was about to cough up the $15 per day internet fee when she said if I filled out a form (1 minute’s work) I could have the internet wi-fi in the room for free….I’m really liking this place. And so to our room where as we threw open the curtains…there it was, one of the most spectacular views right in front of us…so close you feel as if you could touch it….The eye is drawn to the color of the water, it is absolutely mesmerizing…but at the end of the lake is the mountain where there are 6 glaciers, some can be seen from the room, others on various hikes. The turquoise color of the water comes from all the “rock flour” as they call the ex-rocks which the glacier has ground to a fine powder…this silty deposits in the water absorb the light spectrum with the exception of the blue and violets which are then reflected back out of the water…hence the color. There is a path which weaves along the one side of the lake…tree lined and forested …it is a refreshing walk and is quite popular with walkers of all ilks, while the other side of the lake has a stupendous view of the rock slides which have wiped out the trees at various times…you can tell which were the most recent by the scarceness of vegetative growth. After a while, things come back and it begins being forested again…at the end of the lake, there is a sign to a trail which leads to the “Teahouse of the 6 glaciers.” We decided to take the plunge, or the climb, as it actually was….we got incredible views of the hotel and lake getting smaller and smaller as we climbed the 1,000 ft (350 meters) and got further away. It is to be a 4 hour hike and we were right on schedule for getting back to clean up for dinner when it suddenly dawned on us that we had crossed into Alberta and experienced a time zone change….So we cut short the last few hundred meters and hustled back…I didn’t like doing it, but we had no choice…I’m not big on stopping short of set goals on these things…but we’re glad we did it for the joy of doing it…”It’s the journey, Jim, Not the destination.”….How come I can’t remember this at times? Dinner turned out to be the perfect end to the day….Sitting in front of the lake as the colors of the evening were like a moving palette of ever-changing nuances. The food was excellent and well served, everything you would ever wish for..and no, you don’t get a “deal” on dinner…you pay the freight and enjoy the experience…see, I can remember sometimes And so ended a memorable day…one that was captured on film, but the clearest picture is in our hearts. Total bliss. Carol and Ji

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