It's Friday afternoon. We just landed in Calgary and we are quite excited as we are going to see Robyn tomorrow! It's been 3 years since New Zealand already. She comes to pick us up the next morning "what's haaappppeeniing???". The destination for the weekend is Revelstoke, a small town where Robyn used to live about 8 years ago. We have a few stops planned on the way including Lake Louise and some lookouts. The Rockies are already visible after a few minutes driving out of Calgary. The drive is beautiful once we enter Banff following the main road surrounded by mountains all more beautiful than the other. It's Saturday so it is pretty busy and the parking to Lake Louise are all full (nothing closer from 15km) so we decide to go to Moraine lake which is nearby and way less busy! It is a wonderful and quiet place to have lunch once you are 10 min away from the parking lot where most of the people don't walk to.Back on the road after an hour, there are 3 hours left to reach Revelstoke. The scenery is beautiful. Unfortunately, one of the panel indicators of the car goes on and we can see the temperature rising fast. Robyn decides to stop on the side of the road and try to find out what's happening. A friendly Canadian stop by to help us figure it out. It looks like it might be the thermostat. Ideally, we would like to get the car towed but it's quite expensive and Robyn's brother who owns the car has coverage for himself, not the car. So we can't use it. We decide to slowly drive back to Golden, the closest city with a mechanic which is 30km away! We drive the car till the temperature reach its highest point, then stop for 10-15min for it to go down. It takes us around 4 hours... Luckily, we have a couple of card games we can play in the car so it doesn't feel so bad in the end.It's 7 pm when we arrive in Golden and all the mechanics have closed already (it's Saturday as well...). Luckily, one is open on Sunday. We find a lovely hostel and decide to go to a pub and have dinner and a couple of beers to celebrate our reunion and the fact that we reached Golden.Robyn brings the car to the mechanic the next morning and they are able to fix it in 2 hours. It's finally time to drive to Revelstoke so Robyn can show us the mountain nearby and some trails around.We also ride the Pipe Mountain Coaster down the mountain, really fun unless you have someone slow going just before you. We end the day with Chicken Wings Monday deal until we feel sick!It's already Tuesday, time to go back to Calgary. We make a couple of stops on the way in Banff Village, at a short trail to a waterfall and at a lookout where you can see the train coming in and out of a tunnel at the same time... when the train is actually running....A few hours later, it's time for farewells. Robyn is going back to her brother's place for a few days and we are back to our previous Airbnb and we only have one day to visit Calgary. We start by walking towards Nose Hill Park which is not far from our Airbnb and gives us a nice panorama of the city. We then take the bus to the city center and wander around for an hour and a half before taking another bus back home.The last moment decision is to fly to Vancouver the next day. We have changed plans as it was too busy in Banff in June and instead of buying a car and camping equipment in Calgary (province Alberta) we decided to do so in Vancouver and go another way around to come back to Banff end of September.
