For reasons that are unclear to either of us, Sabrina has wanted to go to Banff for as long as I can remember. As in: when I asked what was on her travel bucket list, many years ago, it started with Banff.
Their tourism season is very short, though, and it's apparently always been a hugely popular destination. Also, it has increased in popularity over the last decade due to social media, travel blogs, etc. (the Covid blip notwithstanding).
When a reasonable, direct flight from Newark to Calgary came up over a (for Sabrina) holiday weekend, we jumped on it without doing much research. On a related note, we recently discovered that it's Banff Pride and Canadian Thanksgiving while we're here. The latter is really the end of The Season for many location/activities (e.g., roads close, buses stop running, snow could arrive any time, ski season is just around the corner, etc.). Because of this, this weekend might be "one last hurrah" for park visits, apparently.
Anyway: our convenient-ish flight wasn't until ~3 PM, so we slept in, packed this morning, and left home around 11:15 AM. We had to check a bag to bring hiking poles, because the TSA has a wild imagination, and wanted to have time for lunch before departure. Air Canada operates out of the new terminal A at Newark, so we had plenty of choices for decent food.
The flight was about 5 hours, which gave me plenty of time to read all of the relevant chapters of the Fodor's guidebook and still have enough time to watch a mediocre movie.
Calgary is on mountain time, so we landed here around 6 PM. Then we spent a generous hour on customs, baggage claim, walking most of a mile to the rental car area, pairing an iPhone to the car (VW Taos) to get wireless CarPlay to work, and choosing where to go for dinner.
Given the choice of driving straight to Canmore (our first home base, so to speak) and finding something to eat around 8:30 PM-ish or heading to downtown Calgary for dinner, we went with option B.
We found a parking garage near Stephen Avenue and went for an evening stroll, vaguely in search of casual-but-decent-looking dining options.
The sun had just set, but the temperature dropped quickly. Naturally, we left all of our cold-weather garments in the car. We happened upon the Calgary Tower, which was helpfully labeled. I want to know more about this sentence in the Wikipedia article: "The building is a founding member of the World Federation of Great Towers", but I don't have time to go down that rabbit hole at the moment.
A few chilly blocks east (maybe 1/2 a mile), we eventually settled on Milestones (which is apparently a Canadian chain) for some "modern takes on familiar comfort foods" as Google Maps describes it; it was exactly what we needed, in the moment.
I think this photo of a cowboy watching hockey is a perfect summary of my impression of Calgary.
It was around 8:45 by the time we walked back to the parking garage and resumed our journey to Canmore. It was a bit confusing to find our way out of the city, even with the modern conveniences of CarPlay and such. Both of us being tired didn't help, probably.
Earlier in the day, I'd had several discussions with people about the aurora forecast...
I informed Sabrina that she was on aurora lookout duty during our approximately 1-hour drive along Highway 1. As soon as she spotted something, we stopped at the next random exit in the middle of nowhere, where we found a parking area half-full of aurora enthusiasts partaking in some stargazing.
I knew we were in the right place when I noticed someone had set up a tripod for some time-lapse action.
It was a bit cloudy, but the iPhone camera's HDR ability clearly picked up the aurora. Figuring that we could probably find a less-cloudy spot, we got back on the highway and continued west.
We didn't make it very far before stopping again.
And again. This stop was in the town of Dead Man's Flats. The sign said "Welcome to Dead Man's Flats (More alive than dead)".
It actually shows up better in the photos than it looks to the naked eye, but it's still quite impressive in person.
Traffic thinned out as we went west, and I was able to make up some time. It was 10 PM by the time we got to the condo in Canmore.
We parked in the underground garage, found our way up to the top (4th floor), dropped our bags, and immediately went out on the balcony to stare at the sky some more.
The aurora was visible in all directions. I took a few photos pointing straight up but it was all moving around quickly, making it hard to decide where to look.
Eventually I decided to try some aurora selfies; this turned out to be difficult, because the front-facing camera doesn't do HDR, so these were all taken blind.
Eventually Sabrina got cold and went back inside. I stuck it out for a few more minutes before deciding that we could probably do this again tomorrow night. (But I've gone back out a few times already, to watch. And I'm going to again, as soon as I post this.)
I'm not sure what we're doing tomorrow, exactly. There are almost too many choices here. It will involve some stunning vistas, whatever it is.
Edit: this is what I went back out in the cold to see: Two straight up, and then there was this green line moving up from the horizon.
This line was moving fast enough to notice; these two photos are about 90 seconds apart.
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