This trip to Banff, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains came about easily enough. Jill and I (the friend that went to Iceland with me 2 years ago) had decided to do another riding trip and saw that the same tour group had one in Banff. Heck yeah!
And then we decided we wanted to bring our daughters. And then I invited some other women to join us from a group I've been involved with for over 14 years - and where we lost one of our favorite members last fall. The one who gave us my horse, Mata Hari.
We ended up not going with the tour group and booking our own wild women trip!
And we set off on our adventure all flying in at different times from different places. Jill and her girls flew in 2 days before the trip. Christine flew in from San Francisco and Tree flew in from Baltimore.
I can't even begin to say how excited we were to see MOUNTAINS this big!
We stayed in this little motel in Canmore that was cheap, cheap, cheap in comparison to others in the area but ended up being just fine!
OMG so seriously beautiful!
The next morning we arrived at the stables ready to go! It was drizzling rain and pretty overcast. But the forecast looked pretty good for the several days after that. We were heading out into the Banff National Park - no cars, no electric, no wifi, no cell service. We were disconnecting!
We were assigned our horses, mine was Juice (later renamed Deuce because we had misunderstood!) and took off through the woods down a very muddy trail. The rain was only a sprinkle here and there and they have gave us these great "cowboy slickers" to wear. They covered up every possible exposed part of you! Plus we all had on rain pants and waterproof boots. My coat was so long I had to pick it up to walk!
As we got a little further out we started following a river and could see the mountains cloaked in clouds.
The water was crystal clear! We often stopped to let the horse drink. Our guides were Tess, from Australia, and Hanna from Japan. Both had been dressage riders in their home countries.
After a few hours of riding we stopped along the river to eat lunch.
This was a site set up just for Banff Trail Riders. But were had our trust mule along with us carrying our food. Tess had a fire going in no time and tossed on STEAKS!
The steaks were amazing...except we had no knives so we basically ate like savages!
After lunch we set back out. Christine was giving me a happy wave as I tried to take a picture of what was behind me!
It wasn't long before we started heading UP and were going along some pretty narrow trails where one side went straight up and the other side went straight down. I learned to trust Juice/Deuce.
As we rode the sky started to clear up and we arrived at the big lodge house where we would stay one night and then again on our very last night. The lodge has no electric but does have solar power for indoor showers and bathrooms.
We had another group join us that was on their way back home. One couple was from Brighton! They fed us a huge dinner and I think we were all in bed by 9 pm!!
This rolling river ran right along side the lodge and the sound put us right to sleep.
And I can't fail to mention the family of marmots that lived under the house! I had never seen a marmot before!!
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