We had a scheduled shuttle to Moraine Lake the next morning, so we awoke early, packed our bags, and checked out of the hotel. We grabbed some pastries and coffee from the Grab and Go, then headed over to the parking lot.
Generally, you have to park at the Park and Ride in Lake Louise Village to get on the bus which goes between Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, but I had read online that if you can show them your Fairmont room key, they will let you get on the shuttle there instead. (They basically don’t want people taking up the parking spaces at Lake Louise just to get to Moraine Lake.) So we headed over to the Parks Canada tent, but there was no one from Parks Canada there at the time. The bus driver let us on anyway, but just told us to check in with Parks Canada before we came back to get a ticket.
The bus drove through some very twisty mountain roads to get to the lake. Once we arrived, we took the rockpile trail to climb up to see the lake from above. Once there, we settled in to eat our breakfast. Best breakfast view I have had!
We explored the rockpile trail for a bit, then headed over to the gift shop (no lynx, but LS picked out a cute little badger instead, since it was our last day). After purchasing a few souvenirs, we decided to walk the lakeshore for a bit. The morning had been overcast and a bit drizzly, but the sun was attempting to come out, and we caught glimpses of it shining on the lake from time to time.
We went back and forth on canoeing here as well, but it was fairly pricey ($160 CAD for an hour) and since the weather wasn’t as great, we decided not to.

























Before heading back to the shuttle, we found the Parks Canada booth, showed our room key, and they gave us a ticket to head back to Lake Louise. Once there, we said farewell to the lake and headed back onto the road.
We made a brief stop at Laggan’s Deli again for lunch, eating at the picnic tables out back.
Since we had skipped Takakkaw Falls earlier in the trip and we had some time before we needed to head back to Calgary, we drove back to Yoho National Park. The road to the falls had a pretty intense switchback at one point; we were behind a pickup that didn’t corner well and had to do three point turns to get around them! Once we got nearer, we turned a bend, and the falls appeared out of nowhere. The water flowing over was gushing down, and it was incredible!
We found a parking spot and walked the half mile to the falls. There were quite a bit of people, but it wasn’t as crowded as many places that we went. You could get right up under the falls, but the cold, glacier mist started hitting you from a ways a way. We got as close as we dared without getting too soaked, but I saw people climbing rocks to get even closer. The water flowing into the river was incredible, as well, as it was almost completely white! We were really glad we had made the decision to come here, as it was one of the coolest waterfalls I’ve seen.








We still had some more time, so we took the slower way back to Banff and drove the Bow Valley Parkway instead of the Trans Canada Highway, in hopes of seeing some more wildlife. But I guess they don’t come out much mid-day, as all we saw were some deer.
Once we arrived in Calgary, we decided to drive through downtown, just to check it out. We parked (only $8 CAD for an hour, take note, Nashville!) and paid to go up in the Calgary Tower, which was neat, though a little pricey.






We then headed to the airport, where we returned our rental car and checked into our final hotel of the trip, the Marriott Calgary Airport, which was conveniently located right next to the departures area of the airport. We ate dinner at the hotel and enjoyed a quiet final evening before flying out the next day back home. We miss you, Canada!