Rocky Mountaineer – First Passage to the West – Day 4

I woke up to a beautiful scene in Banff. It had snowed overnight and the fluffy flakes were still falling. It was beautiful! Everything had a sugar dust coating and it just made me so happy that Winter is just around the corner. We got a bit of a lay in today, not a super early start like the past few days, as mentioned in my last post we stayed at the Brewsters Mountain Lodge. This was a "western" themed hotel, with pine furniture and navajo throws.I did get up around 8:30am so that I could walk around the Banff shops and get a couple souvenirs. I bought a couple magnets featuring Banff and the Rocky Mountains, and a couple new healing bracelets; an onyx one (for grounding) and a tiger eye one with blue hues. I also bought an aqua aura quartz cluster. It’s so beautiful. People might think believing that stones have healing properties is weird, but I believe in it. Even if it's the belief of intention, example, putting on a certain bracelet that has "confidence qualities", I'm telling myself, "I'm going to be confident today", it works for me.Afterwards I headed down the street to Provisions General Store. I actually found this place on Instagram and it looked really cool so I wanted to check it out. I bought a "The Adventure Begins" mug lol. Then I went back to the hotel, packed up my things, met up with the FAM group down in the lobby and we boarded a bus. Our first stop was the Banff Gondola at Sulphur Mountain. I saw a Starbucks and took the opportunity to purchase my “Banff Starbucks Mug”. This Starbucks at the Banff Gondola is actually the highest Starbucks in Canada sitting pretty at 1583m (or 5194ft) above sea level. We all received our tickets to get up the mountain and we rode up the gondola. It was a very small gondola car. It only seats four people. Instead of taking the gondola, you can walk up and/or down the mountain as there is a very good trail. It’s nothing like the Grouse Grind, it weaves quite nicely up the mountain with switchbacks, not natural stairs. Might have been a good choice after all the sitting and food we ate on the Rocky Mountaineer lol, but we were on a schedule. Once we were at the top, the clouds began to lift ever so slightly, revealing a peek of the mountain tops every few minutes. On a clear day, this view of the Banff National Park would have been incredible! I did get some really nice photos of the clouds below us and the peaks of the surrounding mountains peeking through. Once we were on our way down, the cloud layer dissipated and we had a breathtaking view of the valley and the town of Banff. On our way out I bought a magnet of the Banff Gondola and we boarded the bus to head to our next stop.We pulled around the Banff Springs Hotel and got a little history lesson on the Fairmont properties. Afterwards we stopped at the Bow Falls Viewpoint. It’s not the grandest of waterfalls, but it’s easy to get to. I imagine visitors to Canada have a greater appreciation for these types of things than I do as we have more stunning waterfalls near Whistler or other parts of the Banff National Park than this particular one.We then had some free time in Banff for lunch, the quickest thing a few of us could think of was The Old Spaghetti Factory. It’s cheap and reasonable quality food. I had the lunch Manicotti with a caesar salad and spumoni ice cream for dessert. Eating so well on the Rocky Mountaineer for two days definitely makes your appetite larger. Once we finished lunch, we headed back to the coach where we then headed up and over Tunnel Mountain to the Hoodoo Lookout. I snapped a couple pictures but basically had a food coma at this point and was just ready for a nap. After this brief stop we on our way to the highlight of the day, the helicopter tour! It was just outside the Rockies at Kananaskis. It was a quick twelve minute helicopter ride, but I got to sit in the front!! It was a nice ride over the mountains, however the clouds cover came back and we didn’t get any view of the peaks of them :( The only thing that really annoyed me was I got a selfie with the cute pilot (Mike) but my stupid iPhone didn’t save it! So maddening.After reboarding the coach I think we were all super tired. This excursion does make for a very long day. If I was honest. It would have been nice to have an extra day in Banff to break up all the sitting we had been doing over the past few days. One thing I will definitely recommend to my clients when doing the Rocky Mountaineer.We finally arrived into Calgary around 7:00pm and checked into the International Hotel and Suites. It’s a beautiful all suite hotel that has been updated recently. I had a huge two bedroom suite, one room was a king bed, the other room had two twins. Once we had all checked in and got a bit settled we all came downstairs and were "white hatted" by Tourism Calgary and were named "Honorary Calgarians". It was kind of a neat ceremony and we were each presented with a certificate and of course a beautiful white cowboy hat which we kept! Afterwards, we went to the Metropolitan Grill for our last group dinner. I had an Angus Burger featuring local Alberta beef. It was really good. The only problem was walking back to the hotel in the cold. It was freezing! When I got back to the hotel I was beyond spent. My head hit the pillow and I was out.Click Here to Read - Rocky Mountaineer – First Passage to the West – Day 5PS - Did you enjoy reading this travel guide? Please consider joining my Wanderlust Journey Community as a Patron supporter. For less than the cost of a cup of coffee per month (my community membership tiers start at $2 per month), you can help support me create more content! Click here for more details.