Lake Agnes, by Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. Wasn't the beach we had in mind, but the beauty of this more than makes up for our mental state.
For a few months, we planned our first trip where we would do... as much nothing as possible. So we booked a flight to Jamaica, and booked a hut/cottage at a resort, where our back door patio would lead right into the water, and a kayak would be waiting for us. We were excited.
But un/fortunately, we had to cancel it because Hurricane Matthew had reached to a category 5 level a few hours before our flight. The resort will let us use the deposit within a year, so.. we're going to try again next year!
In the meantime, what to do with a week off of work? We scrambled on every last-minute-deal website, and was about 2 clicks away from getting tickets to either Japan or South Korea. But then we decided we weren't mentally prepared for that. So we went back to the hunt and somehow, at 2am the day we were scheduled to leave for Jamaica, decided on flying to Seattle, then taking a roundtrip road trip from Seattle to Banff, Alberta, Canada.
Our roundtrip Seattle --> Banff schedule looked like this:
Night 1:
- Take the cheapest flight to Seattle
- Find the Airbnb and get it into your head that you're not going to be at a beach
Day 2:
- Wake up in Seattle, grab coffee at Slate Coffee, eat at Cafe Presse
- Drive to the US-Canadian border
- Stop at Bridal Veil Falls in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada
- Stop at Othello Tunnels in Hope, BC.
- Grab pizza in Merritt, on the way to Kamloops. (In retrospect, had we known Kamloops was as big as it is, we would've eaten there. Kamloops is big enough that it has a Costco.)
- Stay at an Airbnb in Kamloops- this town is really developing, but we have no idea why
Day 3:
- Wake up in Kamloops, eat at Hello Toast (highly recommend!)
- Drive to Mount Revelstoke National Park in Revelstoke, BC, hike Meadows In The Sky
- Stop at Giant Cedars Boardwalk in Columbia-Shuswap, BC
- Hang out at Emerald Lake in Columbia-Shuswap, BC
- See a sunset at Yoho National Park's Natural Bridge
- Get to Banff and eat at vegan restaurant Nourish because you were supposed to go to a pizza shop in Banff but got too tired of pizza from Merritt the night before
- Sleep in a hotel at Banff, Alberta, Canada
Day 4
- Wake up in Banff, grab coffee, pumpkin chocolate muffin, frittata from Whitebark Cafe
- Drive Icefields Parkway towards Jasper National Park, which I think is ranked the 2nd most scenic drive in the world
- On the way, stop at
- Hector Lake
- Crow Foot Glacier
- Bow Summit and Peyto Lake
- Mistaya Canyon
- Num Ti Jah Lodge
- Hike 2 hours one way at Parker's Ridge. One of the harder hikes BUT SO WORTH IT
- Toe of the Glacier, Athabasca Glacier
- Sushi at Sushi Bistro, Fudge at Banff Sweet Shop- the night life in Banff stops at 10pm, so get everything you need by then
Day 5
- Wake up in Banff, get the same stuff from Whitebark Cafe because they did no wrong, their stuff was delicious
- Drive to Lake Louise, avoid having chinese tourists in your pictures
- Hike 2 hours to a teahouse by Lake Agnes, get some tea, vegetable lentil soup, and an egg salad sandwich at said teahouse
- Drive to Calgary, eat dinner at Ten Foot Henry
- Walk to Saddledome and watch a preseason NHL game of the Calgary Flames vs Arizona Coyotes
- Grab some Alberta beef sliders at National
Day 6
- Wake up in a West Elm catalogue that was our Airbnb
- Grab waffles (pumpkin cheesecake and a ham and cheese) at Buttermilk, coffee at Analog- rated one of the top 25 coffee shops in the world
- Drive to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, dinner at Collective Kitchen Public House
- Be reminded that even though the US is beautiful, Canada will always be more beautiful
Day 7
- Decide not to go into the town of Coeur d'Alene on account of the nonstop heavy raining, just start driving to Seattle
- Stop in Spokane for Vessel Coffee, and also get a ginger chai cider
- In Seattle, visit the Chittenden Locks in Ballard, watch a sea lion try to eat fish climbing up the fish ladder. That sea lion was ferocious
- Try to find dome hockey (the hockey version of foosball) at Add a Ball, but no luck :/
- Watch TheatreSports Improv at Unexpected Productions, next to the Gum Wall which they claim was from their patrons years ago!
- Sleep in Bellevue because Seattle is expensive
Day 8
- Wake up in Bellevue, grab coffee at Elm
- Remember that Seattle rains a lot.
- Grab coffee at Elm, check out Ebbet Fields Flannels
- Find out Seattle has a HUGE Vietnamese population, enough that there's a pho shop that sells homemade pho noodles. WHAT
- Grab another coffee at Victrola coffee and see the Starbucks Reserve
- Grab yet another coffee at La Marzocco
- Eat at Pho Bac, one of those really well established vietnamese restaurants that also has a hipster version of itself to attract the young folk.
- Land at LAX around midnight.
Our panoramic highlights:
