Healthcare in Banff and Canmore, Grotto Canyon trail

We have tested the healthcare system in Canada (at least a very specific part of it). If you are travelling with small kids you might find this information useful. Our smallest became one year old during our travel and we spend the next months travelling. He needed vaccinations, some at the first time and some repeating earlier received vaccines. So we started to phone the healthcare providers in Calgary. It was an automated system and very difficult to get information without the local SSN. In Cochrane we went to a Public Health Center and in person it was working out fine. I talked to a very kind doctor who said that they have no empty appointment slots in the next two weeks but they could do the vaccination. We did not plan to stay so long in the area but she advised that in Banff there might be more free slots. So after arriving to Banff we went to the Community Healthcare Center and talked to the very kind receptionist if it was possible to get the required shots for our son. They had to make a few phone calls to get approval for the out-of-country patient but a day later we got a positive phone call with an appointment booked for the next day.

Then we went again at the agreed time and the very kind nurse did all the routine examinations, checked the height, weight and mood of our son and gave him three vaccines in line with his earlier vaccine records. We were very happy and grateful that this step was possible despite our travels far away from home.

We planned a shorter hike for the afternoon but finally it was an exceptionally nice walk at the Grotto Canyon near Canmore. The canyon was much less crowded than our previously visited places and we had to walk in a riverbed which was rocky and sometimes steep. On the sides there were huge rock walls and the width was once tighter and then wider as we walked.

We passed a nice waterfall which had little water flowing at the time of our visit, it might be very different at springtime when s now melts or during winter when it freezes.

Then we arrived to an Inikshuk Garden with plenty of smaller and larger rock towers. Inukshuks are manmade stone landmarks built by the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic region of North America.

Afterwards we arrived to a cave a bit higher up on a steep hill and there we had our sandwiches and turned back to complete our way back to our car in the magnificent canyon. Perfect weather and perfect landscape made our son and us quickly forget the pain of the vaccination.