Friday

We spent most of Friday morning relaxing and recovering from the abuse of our bodies during the week, soaking in the hot tub and sauna. The coastal-born Charity loved the rain showers while in the hot tub.
We eventually headed out, back to Lake Louise to check out the gondola there, as we kept hearing reports of frequent wildlife spottings. We decided to take a back road to the lake, for the same reason, and we were very, very glad we did! Here's what we saw along the road.

 

Incredibly, these guys were browsing just feet from the railroad tracks, where a train had just thundered past. We spotted three more not half a mile further down the road, but we weren't able to get as close, and we wont burden you with the grainy, Bigfoot quality images.
Then, as we rode up the ski lift we spotted this!

(Note: don't turn your speakers up too high, the sound suddenly gets quite loud as the lift chair clatters over a support tower)

As the fellow passenger noted, "it was worth the price of the ticket, eh?"
You may have spotted a collar on his neck, we learned it's a GPS device. This bear is monitored as part of a study sponsored by the railroad to learn about bear movements, as they are constantly wandering onto the tracks and getting killed.
We were quite happy to have seen the bear from the safety of the gondola, and not on one of our hiking excursions.

 

The views from the top were great, though a bit anticlimactic after a grizzly bear.

This concludes our trip, though it's worth mentioning that we spotted many other wild animals each night..... right next to the mashed potatoes. Thanks to Charity's planning, we had a generous food budget and were able to dine out each night with style. It seemed like every menu in Banff featured Elk and Bison burgers!
We cannot overstate how grateful we are to Charity's sister Faith, please go check out her blog to find out how you can do the same thing! We estimated the total value of the trip at around $4000, yet we paid nothing out of pocket and accrued no credit card debt. It took careful planning and enormous due diligence throughout the preceding year to keep track of the offers, but Faith can show you all kinds of tricks to simplify the process.
We also want to reiterate how grateful to God we are for this trip. As many of us have experienced, sometimes even the most carefully planed vacations can turn out to be a real bummer. However, each new day of this trip felt like a special gift from God, which we are completely undeserving of. Furthermore, the saturation in breathtaking scenery kept us in a constant state of praise, as we were reminded that all of this beauty was put here both for our enjoyment and as testament to His glory, power, and love for us!

We leave you with one more link, which we do not recommend anyone follow. For every successful selfie posted, we took five terrible ones. These are really terrible, and will not enrich your life in any way. You will lose brain matter by clicking the link, so for human decency, do not click this LINK.