After getting back into traveling in 2019, a New Year’s Eve getaway to Canmore, and a weekend in Austin, Texas at the end of January, 2020 was primed to be another great year for exploring the globe.
February promised a few nights’ stay up at Lake Louise, with trip to the cottage + Toronto planned for May, tons of camping in the Rocky Mountains this summer, and maybe a longer holiday to Austin in the fall.
As it turned out, the trip to Lake Louise ended up being our last for awhile, and we found out about a month later that life had other plans, aka COVID-19.
{ Don’t get me wrong, as a hugely anxious introvert who gets easily overwhelmed, I am LOVING all this time at home, with nowhere to go and nothing to do and no one to see. I am THRIVING. But it hurts my heart a little bit knowing I won’t be at the cottage or in Austin (quite possibly my favourite places on the planet) anytime soon… }
BUT, we didn’t know that at the time, and one Saturday afternoon in February Holden and I naively set out for what we thought was one of many adventures in 2020…
The idea for this trip started when Holden and I were looking through the deals and offers he got for being a Lake Louise Ski Resort season pass holder. One perk was an extremely discounted rate at the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, which I was immediately all over because luxury is my favourite. So back in the late fall we decided to book a two night stay at the hotel for Valentine’s Day (which happened to fall over the Family Day long weekend here in Alberta this year), enjoy the hotel, get drinks at the Ice Bar and then go skiing on the Monday before coming home (Holden’s ski pass covered weekdays only).
However, in CLASSIC Holden and Elle fashion, things don’t go according to plan. It came to our attention that Family Day weekend was a blackout period for the hotel discount, so we weren’t able to get the low price. No problem – we’d go a weekend earlier instead. Then, by the time we finally got around to reserving a hotel room, the Chateau was all booked up. Again, no worries – we’d stay at Deer Lodge instead, just a few minutes down the road from the Chateau, complete with a gorgeous rooftop hot tub. Deer Lodge is a Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts property, so I figured it would be only slightly less luxurious.
I was wrong.
I don’t have an outright complaint with this hotel, because it was FINE. However, it was the tiniest hotel room I’d ever been in, including places I’d stayed in Southeast Asia, and there was nothing luxurious about it. It was a very basic room, without even a mini-fridge. It worked out okay, because all we were doing in there was sleeping, drinking, and watching copious amounts of Letterkenny, with the majority of our time spent outdoors, but still. That room should’ve cost less than half of what it did – and that was already at a discount! Which brings me to my next complaint – despite having booked the hotel room with the special rate code from Holden’s pass, the front desk staff wasn’t aware of it when we were checking in. They said they’d make a note of it, but when we went to check out, the same thing happened and they were fully prepared to charge us full price. And for whatever reason, the discount we got was different (and less) than what we had seen online. A scam!!
And that’s all I’m going to say about that, because I’m not here to complain (right now, anyway).
The original plan was to get up really early on the Saturday morning and drive out to Abraham Lake in Nordegg to take pictures of the ice bubble phenomenon, which has been on the bucket list for years, but there was supposed to be a bit of a snowstorm, so we decided to sleep in instead and see how the weather was when we got up. Lo and behold, the sky was blue and the roads were clear, but by the time we were ready to go, it was too late to make the three hour trek to Nordegg and then the hour-and-a-half drive from there to Lake Louise, so we headed directly for Banff instead.
Naturally, we had to stop at 514 Poutine in Canmore on the way for a very late lunch. From there, we drove to the hotel and checked in.
We soaked in the rooftop hot tub for awhile (this was one thing about the hotel that did not disappoint – that view was unreal!), and then got bundled up and walked up to Lake Louise. We wandered by the lake for a bit and took in some of the ice sculptures that had been carved for Ice Magic as part of Banff & Lake Louise’s Snow Days festival, then headed back to our cozy room for some Netflix and beers.
On Sunday morning, after a bit of a sleep-in, we got ready for the day and decided to grab some food from Trailhead Cafe down in the Lake Louise village. We got these amazing sandwiches (it’s funny, I never really eat sandwiches, but when I do I always love them. I had The Houston – Amber ale mac and cheese with BBQ pulled pork stuffed inside grilled sourdough bread, with melted jalapeño jack cheese, and it was unbelievably good.) and coffee, of course (I had this one called the Maple Canadiano, which was an Americano with maple syrup and white chocolate sauce. I got it without the chocolate, because that is just too sweet for me, and it was perfect. I’ve started drinking my coffee with a little bit of maple syrup added all the time now).
After that, we drove up to the ski resort, where we took advantage of another discount with Holden’s season pass to go tubing for cheap. It was a nice sunny day, and this was a blast. I think we went up and down 3 or 4 times.
If you’ve never been snow tubing, this involves walking, riding the ‘magic carpet’ or taking a T-bar a short distance up the bunny hill at a ski resort, laying across a deluxe, oversized rubber inner tube, and sliding down a track of snow, spinning at a speed that
seems out of control but is really not that fast.
Breathless from the tubing, we drove up to Chateau Lake Louise to have some drinks at their Ice Bar (also part of the Snow Days festival). We’d first discovered this bar back in December 2016 after skiing, however it wasn’t open when we were there, and we vowed to one day come back. Three+ years later, there we were! The drinks were, as expected, extremely overpriced, but we each enjoyed an adult apple cider and a tiny glass of ice wine.
We went back to the hotel room and got ready for dinner. We had planned to go to a nice-but-inexpensive Italian restaurant over at another hotel, which my dad had recommended, however we got there only to find out that, being a Sunday night mid-winter, a lot of restaurants in the area were closed. We ended up having pasta at Mountain Restaurant, at the rest stop in the village of Lake Louise. Just another night in the life of Elle and Holden!
On the Monday morning (I’d used my monthly ‘flex day’ off of work to go skiing), we packed up, checked out, and headed for the ski hill.
I was a bit nervous about skiing, because I’ve only been out once per season over the past two years (it’s just too expensive!), and last year when I went I was very rusty and not-good. The day was absolutely perfect though. We got great weather, not too cold or windy, the conditions were near-flawless and I skied reasonably well, to say I haven’t had much practice recently. We had an amazing day on the slopes, pausing for a late lunch of ramen + beer at Kuma Yama, a new restaurant inside the main lodge.
On our way home, we stopped at Banff Upper Hot Springs to soak our sore muscles and enjoy a little bit more mountain time before driving back to the city.
All in all, a typical Elle misadventure, but an amazing time all the same.
We. ALWAYS. Have. Fun!
