THE ULTIMATE BANFF + ICEFIELDS PARKWAY TRAVEL VLOG

These days it seems like you can't look at the internet without seeing a photo from Banff. Between relentless Instagram posts, your friend's vacation, or a marketing campaign, there's a crazy level of hype. Continuously setting new attendance records, we decided to join the crowds and see what's the hype about. We're so excited. We're heading into Banff and I am not letting this out of my hands. Super beautiful campsite for the next three nights and we're at the Lake Louise campground. We're just happy that we found any campsite to reserve online before we got here because we booked so late. So it wasn't even like which campground we want to go to, it was just like whatever has availability. So we're at this campsite for three nights which was a lot of availability to find the week before we arrived. But we have to be bear aware. It never stops. I just wanted to show this really quick because I think it's cool. Behind me is this little bridge here and obviously it's a bridge over a river but it goes to the tent camping and it's like a little bear island out there almost. We've been staying over in the RV park part of camping. It's all hard-sided stuff or if you're in a camper van or something. But if you're tent camping here because there are so many bears you have to stay over in like the bear island area and there's an electric fence around it to protect you. And then there's this river which is a moat. I mean the bears can still get across that but they go off to the fence that's kind of a deterrent. But like this is something out of a zombie movie or something. Like your defensive bridge over a moat up to the electric fence. It's awesome. 7 40 p.m. The crowds are totally fine don't you think? Like it's no big deal here. Just as epic as promised. I mean it just smells good here. And you know what? The hotel's not bothering me either. You always see the other way because it looks like this way. Friday night middle of July. We're thinking for the lighting we might have to come here early morning though. We prefer when things are sunset locations instead of sunrise locations but this is looking like a sunrise location. Welcome to day one in Banff. This isn't necessarily the campground I would recommend if you were staying two nights and like having a short visit into Banff. This is pretty remote. You could come up here and you could do Maureen Lake and do Lake Louise but you wouldn't necessarily have to camp here. I would recommend camping at any of the other campgrounds. They're all closer to the town of Banff if you wanted to see and do that and there's just other things closer. This is kind of remote up here in the middle but for us it's perfect. And we're getting AT&T pretty good service like totally fine workable and T-Mobile is pretty minimal here and maybe not even functional. I have a bar though it doesn't say no service. All in all Canada cell service has been way better than the state of Montana so we're just happy about that. Getting settled this morning took a little bit longer than we thought it was going to but we're finally heading up to Lake Louise now to do an actual hike there. We're going up to Six Glacier something. Me and Pepper we're going to the Six Glacier hike. Let's go scooter ride first. Come on let's go. Obviously Saturdays are really really busy here. We had a bit of traffic jam getting up here today but luckily with Scoopy we got some rock star parking right in front and we don't have to wait to park way up there. Pro tip we stopped at the lobby of the Fairmont to go to the ATM and grab some cash because the tea house only accepts cash. Who would have thought a tea house on the side of a mountain doesn't have a credit card machine. To the left? Yeah. Oh okay. Plane of Six Glaciers? Yeah. All right. That's a well-marked trail. It's paved. We shouldn't get too lost. That's a good introduction. Well the beginning of the hike is just right here next to the lake on the paved trail. A little bit stressful getting to this point. Tim was walking 900 miles an hour. I needed to get out of this mob scene. There are so many people. Plus the thing like we're in sweatshirts and pants. There's so many people around here in like shorts and cut-off shirts. Yeah. If you're looking at us and thinking that we're on this arctic truck we are cold but so many people are in flip-flops and shorts and we are a little overdressed here but we also think we're gonna still be hiking at like 9 p.m. Not to mention the fact it's really cold right now. So it looks like on the other side of the lake. Despite how many people there are a slew of nations it is so interesting listening to all the languages that you pass on the path. It's pretty cool. This is the most diverse of a spot we've been to. Like for sure. Even being at Grand Canyon and stuff there was like all Chinese tourists, a couple Europeans. This is like all. This is like anything. Yeah. And everything. The best stuff's always up. I got caught between two horse tourists. There it is. All right. Sorry my apologies. Oh I think I might have hit the record button. Oh wait let's see. No worries. Sorry my thumb hit the display button. Okay you're good. Yeah they're free. Don't worry about it. This is it. We're going from just a little bushwalk thing to snow in July. It's not a big deal. Oh my god I didn't even see that. All right do you think there's rocks? Is that a glacier right there? That's snow. That's where Santa was. But I mean like that is like Louise. We came from the other side. Doing pretty good. Changed clothes 900 times. Definitely less people up here of course. But still a lot. Everyone is coming this way. We're the only people going that way. It'll put you away because it's raining. Here we go. The weather keeps getting wetter on this little. This was supposed to be a nice easy walk to get some tea this morning. And it turned into this. Out of the many things we forgot about doing all this. At least we remembered. Always always bring a rain jacket. Always. Bright blue bird sky bring a rain jacket. And then Finny somehow is kicking my butt and setting the pace right now. Finny where do you get your power from? I'm a sled dog. He's following me. Also I just want to go inside. Do you think it's always raining up here? It wasn't yesterday. We could have done it yesterday. We got to find a seat. I don't know if there will be. Made it. Here. Pepper made it too. I'm here at the Harry Potter house under the stairs having my cheese which I brought on this hike. My tea. We made it. We're not exactly warming up. We're kind of getting colder sitting here outside in the rain. I had been saying I wanted to use my new rain jacket and test it out. This is great. This is very expensive. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this on our channel. There's other rain jackets that work as well. But what's really the game winner here is my Adidas Terek Swift Gore-Tex shoes. I'll have a video right here about those. We basically walked in a rocky river coming off the switchback to get here and my socks are still completely dry. I don't even know. Ah the perfect ending. Oh look you can see my breath. We need to warm up by continuing to hike. This time down and I think the rain let up a little bit so it should be a little bit better going down. Hopefully it's not raining down there and this was just a mountain thing. Well we had to get out of camera out one more time in the because this is so epic and it stopped raining and we got a little bit of sun. Enjoy this b-roll. This is something I've been looking forward to since we first visited up here. Instead of a nice 70 degree afternoon we're doing this when it's like 55 hot. How cold? Oh is that actually it's can't be that much cold in the air. Okay well that's enough of that. Okay that's hard to talk right now. Now it feels warm out here though. I prefer the hot springs. That was breathtaking. So there is a reason for the hype. You literally can point a camera anywhere in the park and strike gold even in the rain. It doesn't hurt the park is clean, well laid out and dog friendly. All this and that was just one location in the massive park. There's so much more to Banff than Lake Louise and that's exactly what we'll be exploring next week as we look for the hidden gems in Banff. We spent last night going out in Banff and young Allison needed to be taken out drinking and dancing. We ended up at a hostile bar called the beaver. Some of us had jaeger bombs some of us had fireball shots and some of us feel a little bit oogie this morning. I mean the night was capped off we missed our bus back to the campground. You know we had a really nice night in Banff until we took the wrong bus and we took it out of town and then now we just are walking back towards town so if you're out in Banff. So then we had to walk back into town from the end. To the beaver. To the beaver yeah because we were thirsty again. Needless to say yeah it didn't feel too great this morning but luckily there are hot springs here. Let's go to them. Okay stop holding your hands up. No it's off video. What are you doing? The hostile bar, the beaver. Somehow never have seen this at any hostel. It was like 95% girls in there. There were just... That doesn't happen where there's just groups of girls like with no dudes to talk to them or bug them. And some of them were like dressed up like they were going out like they were open to talk to you. That was the place. Good marketing for the beaver. Now the beavers would be all dudes. If it says anything about our night what I've eaten so far today and it's already 12 p.m. is mashed potatoes and cream of chicken soup. If you wake up in Banff feeling oogie too a trip to the hot springs is only eight dollars Canadian because it's in Canada. You don't have to have a hangover to visit the hot springs by the way and if you forgot your swimsuit with your hazy mind you can always rent one for two dollars. Finally while it may look like we're off in the mountains we're right outside downtown Banff. It's super easy to get up here. Tell me about being bear aware here. What's your level at? I've completely dropped my guard while I've been in the hot tub. I'm not anticipating a bear attack. I don't have bear spray. Oh you were talking about being bear aware in the hot tub? Yes. Oh I didn't know we were talking about being bear aware. You're not. That's part of being bear aware is never dropping your guard. My guard is dropped. I thought you had it. That was not bear aware. There's many small children here though who would make much better snacks. Notes for visiting hot springs. Remove all your jewelry. It can tarnish all your jewelry. Wear a bathing suit you don't really care about and wear clothes you don't care about afterwards because even if it's just on your skin we've had some clothes that we've decided to throw out that we didn't wear in the hot springs that we you know hiked back with. Oh it's raining. We are loopy. Give us some food. I need more mashed potatoes and creamy chicken. Tales from last night. There are no tales. The scene of the crime. We wandered Banff and then it started raining and also we were drunk. I think the only time that it rained. Oh what is this? The only time it rained last night was when we took the wrong bus and had to walk back. So we walked back through all of this in the rain just to get back to the beaver. Camera's out so we can show you the beaver. Yesterday we went shopping in Banff before we then went out and someone recognized us in one of the clothing stores and it was so cool really. We were just shopping and then someone said hey Finn. I like heard it. Oh I just like slowly turned around like just in case. She was just like I was like me? Me Finn? Wait wait here. Hold on. This is the beaver. Oh the beaver. Oh my gosh the beaver right there. It's the beaver. Go to the beaver. I feel like that was a sub-optimal shot. Well whatever. Okay I'm so embarrassed by how my hair looks. Hold on. If you ever see us in real life please come say hi. That was so cool and I really liked talking to that couple who had just started RVing too and full-time like sold everything and they were driving through Canada and then down the west coast of the U.S. into Mexico and that was just like so neat to be able to have a conversation like that in a clothing store because otherwise I just have to sit here and talk to Tim. So like I feel like those are the only friends that we made in Banff and it was just like nice to have a fun conversation. So we made friends with the bartenders last night. Minus the bartenders that were serving us shots. With the people heading south they were going into Mexico and now we can creep into what they're doing in like the Baja and stuff and I don't know it's nice to get an idea of what other people are doing. So if you ever see us please come and say hi. We're bored. We're all alone and it's just us talking to Pepper the whole time. Ah yes Lake Minnewanka. We come here often for its bountiful LTE internet and fast T-Mobile speeds. This is the third time we've been in this parking spot since we arrived at Banff four days ago. It's also the first place we found in the park. It's right on the south side if you're coming in from Canmore and it is in the Lake Minnewanka loop and this is Cascade Pond or Cascade Creek. It's a very very small little lake river area here. Why we love it. It is the emptiest parking lot in the entire park that we have found so far. There is rocking T-Mobile. There are rocking speeds on both our unlimited T-Mobile hotspot and on AT&T on our phones and it's right next to this beautiful picnic area on this river right here. So it is just completely ideal and we've come here to take calls. We've come here to do some work and uh today since it was a very very late morning we're uh we're here to get some stuff done. It's also... this new camera's heavier. It's also what we're thinking might be our last day of civilization. We need to figure out driving the Icefields Parkway tomorrow. Our plans for Jasper which we don't have any camping for because I couldn't find availability online. There'll still be internet just a little bit. Well we just don't know what to expect so we're just gonna get all of our ducks in a row here, figure some things out and just solidify it as we feel comfortable moving forward with or without internet. What are you really concentrating on when you're doing a rooftop photoshoot? I don't know this doesn't look very interesting because it just looks like a bunch of white from the roof and then we don't ever know what we're doing. How's that picture going? It's not even pointed the right way. Every time she uses the camera it's like the first time she's ever interacted with one. It's a monkey smashing rocks together. We laugh on days that we're driving. We get a lot more Instagram followers than days when we're parked because people see us on the road so if you find us on the road hello we're happy to have you. It's funny. Another hike. I think it's only 10 minutes to pay to lake here. I'm just so sleepy. The lightning has been getting us. Our sleep schedule is so thrown off. So you know of course there's no rules to photography well I guess or maybe there's rules for photography. Anyways we're back here this morning because we didn't like the lighting last night. The mountains were very backlit at sunset so we're back here this morning because now all the mountains are in the sunlight the soft morning sunlight and I think it was very worth it. Just another touch on lighting there you know if and if you're don't consider yourself a photographer or you know whatever obviously everything's better in golden hour you know sunrise or sunset but here even just to enjoy the space I think the first half of the day would be better because the lake was just that really bright turquoise and you know what you're seeing here on camera is what it is. The sun was setting behind those mountains yesterday and I don't think you would have been able to see the color of the lake there with the sun in that position so uh I'm winded. Get here in the first half of the day and enjoy beautiful pay to lake. Kayak strategies 101 back it in. Strategy number one stay close to shore in unknown waters. These strategies come from just respect for being careful and we're not worried about boat traffic. We're not worried about being knocked over by a wave on this calm lake. We are however worried about the temperature of the water and it deflating this raft full of air but you never know. And then strategy number three head into the wind first and then you can ride the waves back. Last thing don't be nervous although we're in the middle of the lake right now head on a swivel bear aware at all times. The only wildlife we're going to see are people taking epic instagram photos. It's interesting looking from the lake out back at them because everybody's facing us now since we all take pictures in the back of our heads. Strategy seven find someone find a tripod for the gopro because I've been rowing that whole time alone. You row us now. That's why I just got the camera going. I just went that whole way. You did go at least 100 meters. It does. How to instagram by Finn. First of all you have to always be centered with the view. Second of all you have to wear what seems pragmatic at the time for your athletic endeavor but you have to bring everything you need with you. What's that? Always leave your hair down. The instagram hat and if you're not wearing a patterned shirt literally who are you? There can't be anyone in the photo but you. Hide all your gear you brought with you. Find a husband who will hold the camera. It doesn't have to be a husband it could literally be anyone. Tie your shirt tight so that the wind doesn't catch it and make you look larger than you are. If you're really looking for followers find yourself a dog. Don't forget to stay aligned with the center line. If possible recruit a third person to be the peddler in the back. Now the most important rule. It must be candid. Always do something with your hands. The more you do with your hands the more candid it looks. I am cleaning the windshield. We're doing a ton of filming out of this. I can't tell you how hard we've tried to keep the windshield clean. There's just so many bugs. You clean it and then an hour later you have a pound of bugs splattered across the entire front of the Winnepego. All right this is so awesome. Can you see the RV in the shot? Can you see the mountains? Can you see the facilities here? We got a nice pamphlet. Of course this is free and there's things like uh coin laundry, there's a little grocery store, camping supplies, beer, liquor, and wine. Wine off sales. What's a wine off sale? It's here. Parkway pub breakfast and dinner buffet. So parking anytime after three and anytime before nine. So overnight. No fires. No hookups. We don't need that. We just needed a place to stay that we were allowed to be. And it's right here at the Saskatchewan River Crossing. So nice little morning stretch. I already have to go to the bathroom and we already left. We just left. It's six miles and we haven't really started yet but the parking lot's kind of far. I put my little buff on. These things are awesome. If you don't know about these it's just a piece of fabric but the air coming down off the glacier is really cold now. We are we are in the little valley between the waterfall where the glacier is and the lake that you saw. It's just so cool going on hikes like this where you come into new environments that you didn't ever anticipate being here when you saw it from far away. It just puts depth into perspective. It's probably pretty loud right here. There's so much cold air coming off of this water it feels like when you go into the refrigerated section of the grocery store all of a sudden. It's just chilly. And then like look how much look at these rapids out here. That is a chasm of rapids. There's no way to say this without sounding like complete jerks but we have seen a lot of waterfalls. I have not seen anything like this. This I think maybe takes the cake for me. It is a melting glacier over a cliff. That is pretty epic. And then just like a glacier in the background. Maybe this is like a diamond desert in Alaska but it's the first thing I've ever seen like this. If I have one problem with this area is there's very limited privacy for my issue about needing to go to the bathroom right now. I don't think that's going to happen anywhere in this valley. And I don't think it's very bear aware to go all the way up there in the trees. Just have to admire nature. Forget about my own nature. Crisis averted. If you're on the Bow Lake Waterfall hiking trail and you need to go to the bathroom and you are bear aware there's this nice rocky berm. You'll have privacy but you're in an open space. You can be as bear aware as you need to be. You're not back in the woods and the trail is way down here by the river. Lots of privacy. Now I can go enjoy the waterfall. We just entered Jasper. We pulled over in the Columbia Ice Fields. I feel like things just got a little more serious. We're in the parking lot right here. Across the way we can see the glacier. Because we travel full-time we're always planning the next leg of the journey while we're on the road. We had spent our two weeks at the border planning the perfect Banff itinerary but hadn't researched any farther north like here in Jasper National Park. We can plan that later we thought. The only problem is now we hadn't had cell signal or internet in over a week. Without the ability to research the area we didn't realize how incredible of an experience you could have here at the Athabasca Glacier. We saw crews going up in tour buses hiking out on the ice. So if you are planning on visiting this area do not miss the opportunity to go on a guided hike. It's one of our biggest regrets from the entire year. That's probably going to be it for this glacier today. We were just talking like well we're going to Alaska. There's going to be so many glaciers we're going to be sick of them. So I think that's the extent of the glacier tour. We're here in Jasper and that glacier was really neat. Like that's such a unique thing to get to do. Our energy is a little bit different today because we just keep seeing so many beautiful things and I think we have like a little fire under our butts to kind of start to get north now because we have been here for nine days in this area which is a really long time for us. Especially after the two weeks of trying to get into Canada. So we're passing things like there's a couple waterfalls on this drive after we got the glacier and it looks just like more busy parking lots of like fighting through the crowds and oh I said it the other day at Bow Falls like we've seen a lot of waterfalls. Sounds terrible but then again if we stopped at every waterfall on the way up to Alaska we would never get there. So I mean just look at this drive that we're enjoying right now. So we're thinking that getting some miles under our belts today is the best way that we can enjoy Jasper. It does totally feel jaded though to see like the waterfall side so many people excited pulled over there and just be like ah. What's most important though if you'll notice Vinny and I are both wearing the same shirt right now.