Just as it had the previous evening, day two of our saga sees our young heroes awaken to the playful sound of rivulets of water dancing upon the corrugated roof of their humble shelter. Arising, they at once realised that it was indeed pissing it down, but that while the great sub-alpine forests of the Rockies had been somewhat dampened, not so their spirits. With this survivalist attitude, and armed with the biggest cinnamon bun I had ever seen (I would have to say it was humongasaurus) we set out for Maligne Lake (above), one of the greatest views in the area. It was not. Frozen lake, snow coming down, and I was wearing shorts. Heading back down below the snow line, we found ourselves at Maligne Canyon (below) and our decision to travel 50kms out of our way was vindicated. An intriguing side-note, to all our geologically inclined readers, the canyon is fact a gorge. And GORGEous it was. The rain had increased the already ridiculous flow of water to epic proportions and it was very nice to behold. 
The drive from the canyon (and to it) also took us past Medicine Lake, much of which was under-ground, and while I did read the little placard by the side of the road, I can’t remember why this happened. In fact, Google has just directed me to Parks Canada who inform me that autumn through spring, sinkholes in the bottom of the lake leads to partially soluble limestone through which the lake drains out, resurfacing at Maligne Canyon. In summer, the lake is about 9km long when the glacial melt exceeds the capacity of drainage. The people of the First Nations saw this and named it Medicine Lake because of its seemingly magical qualities. A long explanation, but I like to think a worthy one.
Passing back through town a brief stop was made at the pastry shop for further delectables and then off once more, to the enigmatically named Valley of the Five lakes. While we only saw one of the lakes (having double-timed it through the woods for half an hour as we were already dangerously close to lunch o’clock) we have it on good authority that the other four were kicking about.
By this point time was not our friend so we pressed on, as we planned a stop at the Columbia Icefields. We had a bit of time to spare which was spent in the museum, however in spite of my deep and profound love of museums (and the sound my own typing voice) I will not go further into it. Suffice it to say there were buttons to be pressed. We rode up to the Athabasca Glacier in a bus and transferred to a behemoth of an icefield explorer-mobile driven by a very nice man called Rich or Rick or something else who informed us it was -15 up top. As I looked around I realised once again I was the only tit wearing shorts. First we went down a very steep hill (the steepest road in the world dontchaknow) and then crawled our way onto the icefield itself. Much of the tour was focused at how far the ice had receded which, like my hair, has rolled back significantly as the ages have passed. It was shocking to learn that the current site of the Icefield centre used to be under several metres of glacier, which will apparently be gone in a hundred years or so. If you were planning on visiting, it would be worth doing it sooner rather than later. At the top we wandered around, Laura fell in the only puddle within a mile of where we were standing, and I made a snow angel.
We finished off our fun travellings back to Banff and the next day sold Betsy Mae with a tear in our eye, and a song in our wallets.
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