Getting up for another day at Lake Louise we could see the sun shining and no cloud anywhere.  This day would turn out to be the best weather of the entire trip.  It’s unfortunate that we didn’t wait until today to do our Mt. St. Piran hike, but with weather in the mountains being so unpredictable, you just have to go for it when the opportunity looks good.

With sunny skies like this, we wanted to go back to Moraine Lake.  It occurred to us, than most of the times we were there, it was raining.  Since we’re not in the kind of shape that would allow us to do hikes the one we did yesterday two days in a row, we were going to spend some time canoeing.

In my case, I could have gone out on another big hike and had no problems with the uphill portion, but my left knee really doesn’t like the downhill.  I need to work on some knee exercises, and losing a few pounds wouldn’t hurt either!

Before going to Moraine Lake, I took a few photos at Lake Louise.  Here is a better photo than the one I took yesterday, showing the area of our Mt. St. Piran hike.

And here is the classic morning view of Lake Louise.

I returned to the hotel where Nadine and I had a quick breakfast before making our way to Moraine Lake.

We started by walking up the rockpile with the crowds and getting some photos from there.

After taking in the view from the rockpile, we headed down to the canoe rental dock. Even with this nice weather, there are currently no other boats on the lake.

Here we are getting out on the lake.

 

The next series of images were taken as we made our way down to the end of Moraine Lake.

 

Here is Nadine enjoying our relaxing ride.

Continuing to the end of the lake…

This image is taken from the west end of the lake, looking back to the rockpile at the end and Mt. Temple looming large to the left.

We then continued along the shoreline at the end of the lake toward the inlet creek at the end of the shoreline trail.

Here is the inlet creek at the back of Moraine Lake.

We then paddled back toward the east end of the lake.  Upon reaching the canoe dock, the staff said that they weren’t busy, so to feel free to keep the canoe a little longer, and that is exactly what we did!

Back on shore, we sat by the shoreline for quick bite to eat.  No sooner did we sit down on a rock and take out an apple, but the chipmunks came by, presumably looking for food, which they were not going to get from us.

This one surprised Nadine by climbing up on her back!

It’s unfortunate that these animals are conditioned to humans so much and are begging for food. And then sure enough, there are a couple of bus tourists sitting there feeding them some nuts. Where are the Park’s Canada staff when you need them to start issuing fines. Feeding a wild animal in a national park and thinking it’s cute and funny? Obviously education hasn’t worked on some of these idiots, and clearly common sense is not as common as it should be. These people need to have some respect for our laws as well as our wildlife so we can preserve what we have.

We left Moraine Lake to return to Lake Louise.  As we were leaving, we were glad we arrived as early as we did.  The parking lot was full and cars were parked very unsafely along the side of the narrow road for quite a ways.  Good thing it’s not a weekend.

We sat by the lake for a while, just taking in the view, and then enjoyed the Chateau grounds before returning to the room.

The flower gardens here look lovely.

We stopped by the gold lounge for a quick drink, and then went to the room to freshen up.  For our last night here, we have dinner reservations at The Walliser Stube, where we had a nice table with a lovely view of Lake Louise.

I enjoyed the food here and had wiener schnitzel while Nadine had fondue, which is their specialty.

After dinner we returned to the room, and it really started to sink in that we would have to leave tomorrow.