Over twenty days crossing the vast maple leaf country, Banff National Park on October 1st

📆 June 7, 2024, Banff, sunny, low temperature 2°C, high temperature 19°C. 🗒️ Today's itinerary includes Sulphur Mountain, Devil's Rock, Bow River Falls, Surprise Corner, Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, Johnston Canyon, and more. Although it seems like a lot, all are within Banff National Park, so the intensity is not high. 🖼️ According to the official naming times of various countries, the top five oldest national parks are: Yellowstone National Park (USA, 1872), Royal National Park (Australia, 1879), Banff National Park (Canada, 1885), Yoho National Park (Canada, 1886), and Kruger National Park (South Africa, 1898). In China, the first five national parks were only announced in 2021, including Sanjiangyuan National Park in Qinghai Province, Giant Panda National Park at the junction of Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces, Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park in Jilin and Heilongjiang, Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park in central and southern Hainan Island, and Wuyi Mountain National Park at the border of Fujian and Jiangxi provinces. Among them, Sanjiangyuan National Park covers an area of 363,000 square kilometers, making it the second largest national park in the world, second only to Northeast Greenland National Park in Denmark (972,000 square kilometers). According to publicly available information online, China has currently designated 44 national park candidate areas and plans to build the world's largest national park system in the future. 🏞️ Banff National Park borders Yoho and Kootenay National Parks to the west, located 110-180 kilometers (68-112 miles) west of Calgary, covering an area of 6,641 square kilometers (2,564 square miles). It is famous for its magnificent peaks, glaciers, lakes, and dense coniferous forests. Banff National Park has a subarctic climate with three ecological zones: montane, subalpine, and alpine. The lower elevations are dominated by lodgepole pine, the subalpine zone below the tree line is mainly Engelmann spruce, and above the tree line are mostly rocks and glaciers. The mountains are composed of sedimentary rock, which was thrust eastward over younger rock layers about 80 to 55 million years ago. Millions of years ago, glaciers covered most of the park; today, glaciers remain only on the mountain slopes, and erosion by water and ice has shaped the mountains into their current form. The park is home to mammals such as grizzly bears, cougars, wolverines, elk, bighorn sheep, and moose, as well as hundreds of bird species. 📽️🚙🚈🏍️ Since the 1960s, accommodations within Banff National Park have been open year-round. By the 1990s, the park's annual visitor numbers exceeded 5 million, with millions more passing through via the Trans-Canada Highway. This has threatened the park's ecosystem security. Based on long-term research, Parks Canada has implemented new policies aimed at protecting ecological integrity. (Images in this section are sourced from the internet)