Banff

Bikers lined the highway west to Banff, and maybe one of them picked up the USA cap Dan lost out the van window. Banff is a resort town, a baby Aspen nestled up in the mountains. For some reason, thousands of Japanese visit every year. Probably a quarter to a third of all business are Japanese owned, and almost all stores have bilingual signage. It's pretty weird, considering it's in the middle of the Canadian Rockies.

We visited Sulphur Mountain, which had both a tram and a trail to the top, but Dan made us climb the whole thing. I can hardly breathe mountain air and I never did understand extended physical exercise. Every sun-reflecting tram that passed overhead taunted me for taking the hard way. It took three hours and god knows how much blood sacrificed to the mosquitoes to get to the peak. Once at the lovely observation deck/gift shop/restaurant/tram terminal, I ordered chili fries and two local ales and made fun of everyone there. Japanese people ran the restaurant at the summit, and almost everyone on the observation deck was Japanese. I wondered what it would be like to scale a mountain that didn't have a gift shop at its peak.

Following the climb, we snuck onto the tram down (8 min ride) without paying, and checked out the "hot springs" next door. That's where you pay 7.50 to sit in a big, warm outdoor pool that smells like sulphur and is full of old people in neck braces. There were a lot of young, Japanese people there, too.

After a quick peek at downtown--lined with all sorts of pretentious galleries, overpriced retailers, Japanese gifutu shoppus, and old Japanese people, we hit the highway.