DOES BANFF LIVE UP TO THE HYPE? (Canada Van Life)

Morning.

God's gold.

And this is how you make coffee in the snow.

Oh, gosh.

It'S boiling. Whoops.

Care. Your coffee's ready. Thank you. You're welcome. It wasn't cold at all.

Sorry.

Are you freezing?

A little bit.

Lazy.

Morning.

Take me to Lake Minnewanka parking lot.

Good morning. It is day eight, we think, on our Van Life road trip through Canada, and it is our second day in the beautiful Banff National Park. We woke up surrounded by snowy mountains, and it was awesome.

We're currently on our way to Lake Minnewanka. We have the heat blasting, and my fingers have finally thawed out for making coffee in the snow this morning. I have, like, a love hate relationship with having to wake up and make coffee outside every, every day. On the one hand, it's so hard to pull myself out from underneath the covers when it's absolutely freezing outside. But on the other hand, I love that it makes me, like, get outside and just, like, take a few minutes and observe nature every single morning.

I definitely love that he does that for me. There are lots of free hikes to do in Banff national park, which we will take advantage of, but there are also a few things that you can pay to do. So today we are taking a boat ride on Lake Minnewanka.

If we make it to the lake in time for our cruise to leave, which is in 14 minutes, and we think we're going in the right direction.

Yeah, we found it.

Stars of flying hill. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you.

So without further ado, we introduce our captain at the helm, the wonder, talented, very experienced Captain Scott. Everyone, you'll want to keep a friendly attitude up with Scott because he's in charge of our safety, right? He's going to take us where we want to go.

The ice on the lake will get to about a meter thick, three feet. We'll put the microphone down, but I'm also not way down here. There's little babies, three of them.

They're so cute. There's two types of deer in the park. The mule deer are the native deer. The whitetail deer were introduced here. So these are the native ones.

And an hour later, we are back at the dock, and our guide was super funny. We learned all kinds of stuff, stuff about Bamp. So instead of repeating everything she said for the last hour, we thought we'd tell you our favorite story about a guy named Boss Bear.

So Boss bear, bear number 122, is the largest bear in the park, weighing over 900 pounds and we've learned that his domain is the train track. And he hangs out there because there's deer. They get hit by the train, he gets an easy meal, and that's why he's the biggest bear in the park. But being the biggest bear in the park, he thinks he can intimidate anything that comes along, including the train. And so he has attempted to intimidate the train twice. He's been hit both times, and he.

Has survived, which is why he has earned the name boss bear. He's also eaten two black bears, but she said he's a very good boy and hasn't had any human encounters that they know of. So we're hoping that we don't see him on our trip.

I kind of hope that we do. I think that'd be incredible. Okay, back to the van. It is freezing, by the way.

Oh, this is us.

Afternoon coffee time.

I've already made you two cups in the freezing cold today.

I still want it.

Just kidding. Of course we can make coffee.

Not quite as cold as it was this morning, which is nice. She's addicted.

Here you go, princess.

Hello.

Your Uber is now in session.

We are caffeinated and we have met back up with Heath and Alyssa. They are driving us down to the town of Banff in their van, which is more like a combination of a van and an rv. While we're driving down, I'll show you around real quick. Sink, Oven, fridge, microwave. Is that a microwave? Convection oven. Bathroom so they don't have to go to the bath house. Oh, a shower that doesn't appear to have been used in a while. And a very nice living space. I'm a bit jealous of you, Keith.

Got all the luxuries.

You're invited to come hang out anytime.

To be fair, they have been cooking us dinner like every single night over here. Never gets your door open. Yeah, me neither.

Thing is locked.

So the town of Banff is super unique because there's like an actual full fledged town built inside of a national park, which I think is pretty rare.

Yeah, there are five different resort towns in national parks in all of Canada, and we've been basically trying to hit up all of them.

So on the one hand, it's pretty nice because like five minutes away from your campground, you have all these different places to eat. You have all these amenities that you would have if you were just out in the middle of the wilderness. But at the same time, there's just something that feels wrong having a McDonald's inside of a national park.

At least it looks Rustic and like on theme. It's like if you go get a McMuffin or something like that, it looks like you're in a log cabin. My mouth is like kind of frozen.

I know. It does get so cold that you can barely talk.

There's also a Starbucks, which I'm not complaining about.

Always all about the coffee.

Phone call, it turns out, is only a 20 minute walk from McDonald's. It's amazing. You just cross the bridge and you're on a hiking trail. Love, Sam.

All right, we are heading to dinner. Keith, I have a very important question for you.

Let me hear it.

Where are you taking us?

We are going to Eddie's. So we're going to our favorite burger restaurant. I had peanut butter on mine last time.

That is just weird. You're gonna try it. He has promised me the best burgers in Banff.

I won't disappoint. Way better than McDonald's. We've been giving a lot of love.

To McDonald's in this video. They're also going to a local restaurant. That's right.

This is the most exciting I've been about a meal in so long. We ordered a bison burger that has onion rank on it. Enough said. And our first poutine in Canada. This is the real deal. It's french fries with cheese curds and gravy.

All right.

I got a nice big cheese chunk in this way.

It's amazing. So fat. It tastes so fat, but so worth it. Every pound.

I did it myself this time. So we put gondola tickets, hoping we'd be up there for sunset this evening. Not looking extremely promising, but we're crossing our fingers, hoping that the clouds are going to clear by the time we get to the top of the mountain.

I'm just thankful it's not raining.

Even if. Even if the clouds don't clear, it will be beautiful. Just like everything else in band.

Last of the evening.

This is crazy.

It's gorgeous.

I like knowing there's fresh powder. So if we fall, it'll be like.

I like how you immediately go to.

If we follow, I'm looking for. I would feel very safe seeing. Very safe distance.

I hate this.

I hate this.

Loud noises. Scary.

How's it going?

That was scary and beautiful.

Wow, it's cold.

Wow, it is freezing.

Cold, Nate.

Yes. It is so much colder and so much snowier up here. Right there.

Yes. I'm a pointed yet.

Yes, exactly.

Actually, yeah. That is the very tip top of the mountain. They have a nice little boardwalk trail. It looks super icy. And we're gonna try to make it up.

There we are.

That's so.

So the gondola doesn't actually drop you off at the very top of the mountain. Instead, you have to do a 30 minute hike across an icy boardwalk. Apparently, I was the only one that thought that that sounded like fun.

It's so cold.

But Kara talked. Kara talked herself into coming with me because she said she needed to work off the poutine we just ate.

It's true. And this really is, I think, my favorite view of the whole trip so far. So I'm making myself soak it in while I can.

There's a nice, like, heated observation deck inside, but for some reason, to me, it just doesn't feel like you're truly experiencing it if you're not out in the freezing cold. And come on, it's pretty cool. We're walking through winter wonderland.

We are out here freezing. Not that I would have it any other way, but we did just receive this message from Heath and Alyssa, who are waiting back inside in the warmth. Karen, Nate, y' all went on a hike in the cold, and we made pineapple apples, so hope y' all are staying warm. We're gonna eat our apples. We're not jealous. We're not jealous at all.

Wow, we've made it to the top. I feel like I need to whisper because it is just so majestic and quiet up here, but totally worth the trek. I think it's one of my favorite mountain views that I've ever seen. The sunset, the snow.

The thing that made doing the gondola this evening really special is that I feel like it's really brought our day full circle. We have incredible views of Lake Minnewanka, which is where we start at the morning.

We did that on purpose.

Wow.

This is the greatest. Is this an illusion?

Okay, now, I'm not really sure who made the right choice. That fire would have been really nice.

Views are pretty good here too.

Yeah, I felt slightly bad, but then they were giving away free caramel apples and I felt less bad.

Yeah, as soon as we saw that, we're like, yeah, we did the right thing.

Road trip through Canada. And I can't remember what I was going to say after that.

All right, will you just walk up ahead?

Oh, it wasn't video.

Did you throw that at me or did it fall on me? Oh, I thought you threw it. So that's why I showed my mad face.

Sorry.

Faux Falls is only a 20 minute walk from town. Are you okay?

This is, like, the worst place.

Yummy.

I hate this. I missed one of these yet. Oh, I felt like my butt was gonna hit, too. Yeah, I hated that. Nate hates it when I get the camera because I do this.

There's the lake we were at this morning.

Give me that. Testosterone. Wow.

Look at this view.