Seeing Lake Louise from all angles

Lake Louise is perhaps the most famous place in all the national parks of Canada. It seems to be on every traveler's bucket list, and we're pretty sure all those travelers from all over the world have converged on Lake Louise the same week we are here. Even though there are three parking lots at the lake, we've heard that they fill up by 7:30 a.m., so we are determined to get one of those spots. We were up early this morning, and at the parking lot by 6:00 a.m. It's only a 15 minute drive from our camping spot, but we were amazed to see how full the parking lot was that early! We gathered up our backpacks and hit the trail as the sun was rising and lighting up the Victoria Glacier on the far end of the lake. We are planning to see the lake from many angles today, and this was our first angle of the day.

Denisa got in the middle of that magical setting, just to prove that we were there, and had a view of the lake almost to ourselves.

We have a full agenda for the day, as we headed out on the trail along the edge of the lake.  Mark took this picture as we got started this morning. He thought he was just getting Denisa in the picture, but she was already visiting with the couple walking just ahead.

We would end up talking and hiking with that couple all day. Meet Jill and Mike from Lincoln, Nebraska, our new hiking buddies.

Our first destination will take us up in elevation to the Plain of the Six Glaciers. We never did count them, but we'll take their word that all six are present and accounted for.

Another destination is the tea house that sits among all those glaciers. There are two remote tea houses in the mountains surrounding Lake Louise, and this is the less known. For that reason, and the fact that it is still pretty early in the day, we didn't have to wait for a table. We had a bowl of their soup-of-the-day, which included tomatoes, macaroni, and garbanzo beans. It was surprisingly delicious!

For some reason Denisa takes pictures of outhouses in particularly beautiful locations. She adds the outhouse at the Tea House at the Plain of Six Glaciers to her unusual collection.

The plan was to stay up high to complete a loop towards Lake Agnes. But somehow the four of us never found the connecting trail. So we ended up going back down the mountain--which made it a longer hiking day than planned. The good news is that going that direction took us by a little ice cave.

We could see all the way to the end of the cave. The ceiling was dripping as the temperatures were rising on this beautiful weather day. We are blessed with another day of sunshine and temperatures in the low 70s.

It was also during this part of the hike that we had our wildlife encounter of the day. We managed a picture of the tiny pica that was eating wildflowers beside our trail. Mark thinks he looks too much like a mouse, but who can resist a rodent with a flower in its mouth?

After enjoying the snow cave and the pika, now we had to make the steep hike straight up the trail to Big Bee Hive Mountain. We introduced Jill and Mike to our take-100-more-steps-before-you-have-to-stop-and-breath technique of getting up these steep mountain trails.

Hopefully we're going to get acclimated to this thin air at these high altitudes after a while. But we finally made it to the top of the Big Bee Hive for some great views!

We took way too many pictures to chronicle our accomplishment of making it to the top of one of the tall mountains that surround Lake Louise. We are seeing the lake from yet another angle.

From here we could see the famous color of the lake from a new perspective as Mark climbed out on a ledge. Jill was a little concerned about him standing out there. Denisa has been concerned about him for years.

We could also see more of the lay of the land. We had heard that Mirror Lake was close by, and now we can see the two together from an aerial perspective.

We had to take a picture of the happy couple together, standing on one of the ledges overlooking the lake. As one of the bystanders said, this wouldn't be a good time for one of those "oops moments." In other words, this wouldn't be a good time to accidentally step backwards.

Denisa took another picture of a much younger happy couple. This young man had just chosen this beautiful back drop to propose marriage. When we walked up, they were taking pictures of the engagement ring and sending texts to family. When Denisa offered to take pictures of them together with their camera they were happy for the opportunity. She is an experienced proposal photographer as this has happened a couple times before. It's one of the benefits of hanging out in so many beautiful places!

We had a mountain-top snack, taking a picture of yet another picturesque picnic spot as we get to wander God's wonders today.

Now rested and refreshed, we headed down the other side of the mountain towards our next destination--Lake Agnes.

The only problem with being on top of the mountain is the going up and the going down.This is a steep endless set of switchbacks. You can barely see the three of us waving our hiking poles, as Mark took our pictures from above.

Finally at the bottom, we could stand right beside the bright green water of Lake Agnes.

This is a more accessible hike, so the tea house at this location is much busier. Besides, it's now 1:00 so more people are on the trail. But not everyone has been hiking for six hours already today.

After saying good-bye to Lake Agnes, it's just a few more miles back to the parking lot.

On this final leg we'll walk beside Mirror Lake, the little bright green circle that showed up in the aerial pictures beside Lake Louise.

Our legs and feet are tired as we finish up the thirteen miles for the day. That should be enough exercise for one day. But wait--we have another plan. We want to take advantage of our close parking space to get our kayak on this famous lake.

After a blue-sky hiking day, the clouds have rolled in. So our kayaking pictures aren't quite as pretty as we had hoped. But any day on this lake is a beautiful experience when you're looking at the Victoria Glacier from yet another angle--sitting on the water.

Even without the sun, the lake still has that famous mint-green color that is caused from the glacial silt. We rowed to the farthest point of the lake, so we could see the water pouring in from the melting snow off the mountains. From this angle, we learned a secret that all those people standing far away on the dock don't know. It looks like the water arrives as a silty tan color before it mixes with the deeper water and changes to that elegant green.

We are taking our time, enjoying the lake from yet another angle this afternoon. It's hard to get a picture of just how big the surrounding mountains are. We tried to get a picture of a canoe on the water in front of the mountains, but they are so tiny that you can't even see them.

Those fellow-canoers are having an expensive afternoon. It costs $125 per hour to rent a canoe here at Lake Louise. Since we spent two hours on the lake, we'll get our sea eagle kayak paid off pretty fast!

We finally headed back towards our starting point. Instead of mountains and a glacier, we're paddling towards the Lake Louise Chateau.

Built in 1913, the Chateau is an expensive place to stay, but the residents don't have to worry about getting to the parking lot at 6:00 a.m.

By the time we got the boat dried, and then made that long carry back to the parking lot we were tired! It had been another 13-hour day of wandering God's wonders in some of the most beautiful real estate in the world. We have seen Lake Louise from many angles today, and we have been blessed by them all!