I only have a few minutes to get organised before the sun started to make its presence known. The pinks & oranges early in the morning help photographers the world over & Lake Louise is no exception. 
Within 20 minutes the show was over (below). It's still pretty spectacular without the pink light.
At 1661m above sea level, Lake Louise isn't too far below the tree line. You can see the line of yellow trees on the slopes of Fairview Mountain (above & below) to the South Of Lake Louise. They're larch trees. They're a conifer & have needle leaves similar to pine & spruce trees. The interesting thing about them is that they're deciduous. In other words the needles go yellow in autumn & fall off. They are a magnet to landscape photographers in September & October because the yellow is so vibrant, almost florescent.
We headed back to the hotel for breakfast & checkout (& we were very glad to get out of there). Great position..... That's about it.After breakfast we headed out to Moraine Lake (15kms away) only to find out that it's in shadow early in the day in the colder months. We turned around & decided to head north along the Icefields Parkway in the hope that the weather would play nice. No such luck. It was still cloudy & windy just like the couple of days previous. We walked up to the Peyto Lake lookout (below) & arrived just as two busloads of tourists swamped us. We took a couple of quick photos & scarpered.
We headed back to Moraine Lake. By the time we arrived the cars were parked up along the entrance road for half a mile (it figures as it was a Saturday after all). We were lucky enough to snag a car park in close & took the short walk to the top of the rock pile as we'd done a number of times before.
No matter how many times I visit Moraine Lake & the Valley of Ten Peaks, the impact value is still there. It's easily my favourite scenic spot in Canada.
We said goodbye to the beautiful lake & made tracks for Calgary.
We took the scenic drive along the Bow Valley Parkway between Lake Louise & Banff. We made a short stop at Morant's Curve (below). It's a popular place to take photos of passing trains with nice scenery in the background.
Magpies are common in Canada, but in the year & a half we lived there I never managed to take a photo of one. On one of our scenic stops, I managed to catch one with the camera. They're different to their Australian namesakes, but they're just as resourceful.
One last stop for a photo of Castle Mountin (with blue sky behind it at last!) before the hour or so drive back to Cowtown (Calgary).
After a couple of hours of down time at Shane & Laura's place we headed to Limericks to meet up with some of our Canadian friends. There were some missing faces that night, but it was a pretty good turn out considering. There was a lot of catching up done over quite a few drinks. We miss our Canadian friends.
