Banff is normally crazy about people. Now is the time to go.

A a few miles north of the Trans-Canada Highway, near the tiny hamlet of Field, British Columbia, is a blue-green lake aptly dubbed emerald, and a lodge that borrows the name.

The cottage occupies such a small portion of land in Yoho National Park that there is no space for visitors’ vehicles, so they are left behind, half a mile away. Guests board a sprint van, which takes them across a small wooden bridge by the lake to the registration desk.

If that sounds like a remote wilderness experience, it isn’t. On sunny summer Saturdays, the road to the parking lot is lined with cars, with tourists rushing to and from the trailhead; rent kayaks, canoes and paddle boards; or pose for selfies on the wooden bridge. The shuttle driver drives them away every half hour or so.

“If you think it’s bad,” the driver says apologetically to the van passengers as the ship waits for dozens of tourists to clear, “you should see it when the international borders open. It is five times more.

Currently, there is only one open international border in Canada: the 5,525-mile land border with the United States. On August 9, after 18 long months, it reopened to non-essential travel, without reciprocity from US authorities. Americans can visit Canada now, just for the fun of it. Canadians cannot visit us, by land anyway.

A week and a half later, the crossing in Roosville, British Columbia, was calm. An hour north of Whitefish, MT, Roosville is just about such a rural place to escape America and its growing COVID count and crowded campgrounds, but there’s no way to guarantee a fast ride across an international border, anywhere. When I arrived in Roosville on August 22, I had planned to wait for hours. I crossed in 30 minutes.

Despite its commendable vaccination rates and comparatively low case count, Canada’s newly unrolled welcome mat at its southern border has yet to inspire many Americans to rush north. Just over 200,000 non-commercial travelers entered Canada by land in the week after the border reopened, more than double the previous week and triple the number that crossed that week in 2020. But in 2019, 1.4 million travelers crossed the border, and most hotel operators have only reported a “trickle” of Yankees in their midst in recent weeks. Chatty waiters in restaurants seem genuinely surprised when told their guests are from (my homeland) Oregon, South Carolina or Texas.

That’s why there may never be a better time to visit Canucks, Clicks, and Water Throwers Country, while they’re always happy to see us, of course.

Winston Ross

I came to Banff, named after the area Banff National Park, 50 degrees and rain. The inhabitants welcomed this weather with joy, after a summer of heatwave and smoke. Like Venice, the Acropolis and Times Square, the blocks of downtown Banff are usually crowded with tourists in high season. After the Oregon and California wildfires polluted the Alberta skies for much of July, the air cleared and travelers returned in droves, but with a composition radically different: they are mostly Canadian. Normally overpriced by their strong dollar neighbors, Canadians have taken our place, in hotels made newly affordable by last year’s drop in demand and by half.

“It’s mostly Eastern Canadians now,” says John Doherty of Banff and Lake Louise Tourism. “From Quebec and Toronto. From the United States, I’ve seen a Connecticut license plate since the border reopened, and that’s it. I don’t know what is holding people back.

Winston Ross

Lynn Henderson, Regional Director of Public Affairs for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, suggests that this is a confluence of factors; With the increase in the number of cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19, traveling abroad seems uncertain. The pent-up urge to Get out that marked the start of summer seems to have faded in both countries. And while it is certainly possible to cross the border, there is no guarantee that the process will go smoothly. And there is great confusion about the border requirements. “We’ve had guests who just showed up at the airport thinking they’re there because they’re vaccinated,” says Henderson, “and they call our hotels and we have to tell them they need to. recent COVID tests, uploaded to a portal. “

There is plenty to do in Banff and the surrounding national parks, and plenty of space to do it. Options range from group tours, like the funky vintage-inspired vehicles of Open air tour to the glacial navigator cattle of Columbia Icefield Adventure; individualized visits, like those of Clare McCann Bikescape is newly licensed to ride on the single track mountain bike trails just up the hill from downtown. She has applied for a permit every six months for the past five years, she said. It wasn’t until May that the Parks Department finally signed on. Today, she is the only certified guide in Banff.

Some of the region’s most incredible experiences can be had without any help. Once the weather cleared up, my partner and I unsheathed the inflatable kayaks from their storage bags atop the car and tossed them into the Bow River, just below Banff Springs, with the majestic Fairmont Banff Springs looms in the distance. We floated in idyllic, turquoise Class 1 water to the next town, Canmore, then disembarked and took a cab back to the hotel.

Winston Ross

If you get up early enough (to avoid the crowds) the narrow slit Johnston Canyon did a breathtaking morning hike, which I took with a guide from White mountain adventures, who had secured e-bikes for a leisurely ride back to town along the Bow River Parkway, which was closed to vehicular traffic.

Banff’s dining scene has improved dramatically over the past decade, beyond chain restaurants like the Old Spaghetti Factory. Highlights include The bow, which opened in July in the newly renovated Buffalo Mountain Lodge; Hello Sunshine, a fun Korean sushi and barbecue mashup with a menu too robust to explore in one visit; and Sky bistro, which requires a turn on the Banff Gondola, 2,900 feet above town.

Kelly Givens and John Poole finally made it to Banff in late August, having postponed their trip three times. (They were originally scheduled to travel from Atlanta to Calgary in June 2020.) During a layover in Minneapolis, their flight was delayed by three and a half hours. A man sitting next to them had his COVID test negative, but was turned back at the door of the flight to Canada because the delay made his result more than 72 hours old.

“It’s like Colorado on steroids,” Givens marveled. “The green of the water really captured me.”

Winston Ross

Being among the only Americans in Canada was nice. There are few things more annoying when traveling abroad than being halfway around the world surrounded by American accents (especially when my compatriots misrepresent the United States). Travel to Canada now, even to tourist spots like Banff and nearby Lake Louise, it’s enjoying a rare trip to a country that is mainly visited by itself, at the moment. Being American here is almost exotic.

“It’s a difficult place to get to,” said Tyler Longwell, 24, a driver and guide who took us on an animal safari with Discover Banff Tours. “You really tend to only have one chance.”

Banff was founded after a few workers building the British Columbia Railroad over Kicking Horse Pass discovered a small hot spring in a cave on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta. They set up a rudimentary cabin and started charging for admission. When the federal government got wind of the operation, officials saw the potential, bought the building from the railway workers, and turned the entire area into a national park, luring travelers in by marketing the parks under the name “New Alps”. . Banff’s iconic hotel, the Fairmont Banff Springs, was built by Canadian Pacific Railway General Manager William Cornelius Van Horn, who towered over a 7-foot drop and said, “If we can’t export the landscape, we will import the tourists. “

And import the tourists they have. In 1936, city leaders built an airstrip, only to convince jazz singer Benny Goodman to fly his private plane to Canada and perform at the Banff Springs Hotel. Banff National Park typically receives 3 million visitors per year, more than any other park in the country. The number plummeted in 2020, for obvious reasons, but rebounded this summer, driven by the same pent-up urge to get out that pushed national parks in the United States to the brink.

Winston Ross

Returning to the United States last week was even easier than the trip north. While passing through Kingsgate, British Columbia, a border patrol officer returned the passport in which I had kept my vaccination record. “I don’t need to see this,” he asked, and after asking me to roll down my windows and signal if I was carrying fruit, vegetables, alcohol or cannabis, m nodded to enter America.