More mountain goodness

After the apparent successes of yesterday we were hoping another early start would yield an equal result.
How wrong were we!

Let me remind you: yesterday’s yield was 5 bears and a lot of wapiti. Today’s list is like this: 3 bears (of which 1 mother and her cub) quite a few wapiti and mule deer and 2 wolves. I’m sorry? Yes. Wolves. 2 of them. One per sighting. AWESOME!
Unfortunately for us, the bears were all black bears (some very brown ones!) so we still haven’t seen any grizzlies yet. Maybe later.

The wolves we saw were both grey wolves, and one actually was grey. The other one was black, but still a grey wolf as that’s the only spicies of wolf living in Banff National Park.
All animals we have encountered in the past two days were spotted while driving on highway 1a.
As we were not completely sure what species the bear family was, we went to the National Park Service building in Banff. We passed the question to the ranger, and he determined with some help that the bears we saw actually were black bears. We now know the most determining factor of bears are their claws, but unfortunately for him we have not seen them.
His reaction to us spotting several bears and a wolf was disbelief which only grew bigger after we told him we also saw a second wolf and more bears!

The rest of the day we spent doing some smallest stuff like visiting local falls (Bow River Falls, near Banff) and trying to get on the gondola to Sulphur Mountain. This didn’t quite work out as the locals also had their day off and were trying to make the most of the lovely weather.
We did go see the lower and upper falls of Johnston Canyon, which is located between Banff and Lake Louise.

Tomorrow is a moving day for us. First we pack our bags and leave this hotel to drive up to Jasper via Canada’s most beautiful road, or so we have been told. We are just hoping for clear skies and no rain!