My Birthday Weekend In Banff

Let me just start this post off by saying: this is not a beautifully curated blog post. It's more of a mish mosh of random photos put in chronological order to show you all the beautiful and weird things we saw in Banff this summer! Rachel and I traveled up there for my birthday, and I'd say future birthdays will be hard to beat. We camped for 3 nights near Two Jack lake and spent every second taking in the views. Here are some facts about Banff that you may find interesting:

Going in the summer is subjecting yourself to a tourism nightmare. Not even getting to the big spots at 6 AM will give you solitude. There is NO such thing as solitude during the summer in Banff. That's not to say it isn't just as incredible, but it definitely does put somewhat of a damper on the experience. Next time, I'll be returning in the fall, for sure!

Yes, the lakes really are that blue. And they're just as amazing as they look in all the photos. It's kind of hard to believe that they're real, even when you're looking right at them.

Ketchup chips exist in Canada and I highly recommend you stock up on as many bags as you can. Yes, everyone will know you're an American if you do this. It doesn't matter. They're INCREDIBLE.

Tim Hortons has super cheap coffee and will get you through mornings when you slept in a tent the night before and haven't showered in 3 days. #grublife.

You won't believe the weird things you'll see the tourists doing. Photographing in all kinds of weird, crazy positions, hiking to alpine lakes pushing strollers and wearing dresses and heels, selfie sticks literally EVERYWHERE, and so much pushing and shoving for the shot that you can find a million of on Google. It's all so strange. While annoying, we incredibly enjoyed watching strange tourist behavior. If was definitely our form of entertainment for the weekend.

So, enjoy the following collection of photos from our Banff birthday weekend! It includes insane views, sneaky shots of weird tourists, us eating all our meals out of the back of Rachel's jeep, parking lot breakfast (we got so many weird stares for that), the most amazing sandwich bread (homemade oatmeal brown bread, YUM) eaten at an alpine teahouse, me deep lunging in front of Moraine Lake, and lots more goodies. Man. What a way to turn 23!