CANADA OCTOBER 2018

Banff. National. Park.

Sooo beautiful.

Maybe I should back up two steps.

Kara and I both recently returned home from serving as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We weren’t able to hang out for almost two years, our contact reduced to just writing emails every week. Which, as best friends, is super difficult (and emailing was hard for both of us to keep up). So, after we both got home, we went out to lunch. We got talking. Before leaving on our missions we’d gone on a cruise to Mexico which was SO FUN. After reminiscing our time in Mexico, I said something along the lines of, ‘Hey, let’s go to Canada to see Banff.’ And she was down. No questions asked. She didn’t even know what Banff was, but by the end of the day the dates were set and the airbnb was booked.

We proceeded to convince Steven and Alex to come with us, which ended up being less convincing and more of just saying we were going. It was a miracle our schedules lined up, seeing that we all go to different universities and have completely different schedules. But, the stars aligned and everything worked out.

It was probably the quickest trip to Banff anyone has ever made, but it was SO worth the 15 hour drive. The moment we saw the Canadian Rockies, we were starstruck. Utah mountains are beautiful, but this was something different. So beautiful, so amazing.

The day we spent in Banff, we woke up at 5:00 to make sure that everything was ready for the photo shoot we were doing in the park. I had a dress from Modest by Mon Cheri that Kara was modeling for me. It was dark as we drove into the park, and we got to Lake Louise before any of us had eaten breakfast. We ate cold pizza from the night before and Kara got into the wedding dress.

After Kara got her snow boots on, we were ready to walk down to the lake. Lake Louise was UNREAL. We got there before the sun was up, and there weren’t too many people around. It was beautiful.

We asked a man who evidently didn’t know how to speak English, Japanese, or Chinese (we tried in all languages) to take our photo. Thankfully he could understand what we wanted and took it for us.

Kara’s hair is naturally suuuper curly, and for the shoot she had straightened and curled her hair so it looked nice. We didn’t take into account the humidity, so it was nice and poofy before we knew it. We resorted to a simple braid for the rest of the shoot.

We died seeing so many selfie sticks.

There were so many tour groups visiting from Asia with their selfie sticks. They loved seeing Kara in a wedding dress and didn’t mind staring. I wanted to get a photo of everyone looking at her, so before we left, we walked back to where they were all standing on the dock. As we got closer, I heard some people speaking Japanese and HAD to stop to talk to them.

They were surprised that I spoke Japanese, and then started gushing about how pretty Kara looked and kept saying congratulations for her marriage…and then asked to take a photo. Which got the attention of other tourists who also wanted photos with Kara. It was hilarious!

We drove all around the park to see different sites, but Peyto Lake was one of the places that was specifically on my list to see. The water really is that blue!! How unreal! From the parking lot, we walked a little bit up a paved road to get to the lookout point. On the way back, we decided to take a different way down, which ended up getting us temporarily lost on the side of the mountain. There we were, tromping through feet of snow and sliding down ice, with Kara in a wedding dress and us holding the flowers and other gear. It was quite a site to see. Thankfully we eventually got back to our car.

The last stop was the town of Banff. After doing some shopping, we checked out some waterfalls that were close to town, met the cuuuuutest dog, and ended the night with some amazing burgers.

Before driving home on Sunday we stopped by the Cardston temple to snap some pictures.

There is honestly nothing that I would recommend more than road tripping with your best friends. The trip was quick and we didn’t sleep much, but it was so worth it! Banff was beautiful, and spending time with Kara, Alex, and Steve was priceless. Can’t wait to go back and see those beautiful mountains again!