Nov 26 - Dec 1, 2015
First things first, I want to thank RabbiGoldenberg and MarcoPolo, both of whom were extremely generous in helping me plan this and together saved me hundreds of dollars. .
This trip was very last minute as I was extremely busy at work and didn't have much time for planning. I started off looking for flights to an unknown destination about a month in advance but everything was ridiculously expensive due to it being peak season. We had been considering going to Banff this past summer but flights were overpriced then as well so we ended up going to the Carribean instead. So the thought of going to Banff was still resonating in the back of my head and when I happened upon flights at just over $300 roundtrip I decided to jump on them. Although its not very warm in Banff during late November (an average high of less than 20 degrees) we decided that the snowy mountains would make for a beautiful winter getaway, plus I was dying to get in some good snowboarding already.
With flights out of the way (Thursday-Tuesday) it was time to plan an itinerary so I could book hotels in the appropriate locations. This was a bit complicated as we were landing in Calgary on Thursday afternoon so we didn't want to drive too far as Shabbos was about 4:15 pm. We ended up deciding on Canmore for Thursday night, Calgary for Shabbos, Banff on Saturday night, and Lake Louise for Sunday and Monday. We were originally going to kinda just drive through Banff because we didn't want to switch hotels as many times as we did but there was no availability in the Fairmont Lake Louise for Saturday night. I later found out this was due to the World Cup men's event taking place at Lake Louise ski resort that weekend.
(To be continued over the next few days. Hopefully with pics)