So as most of you know, I think, I live in Canada — and usually I travel quite a bit! Well, the panini’s put a real damper on that, but last week I finally picked up again and got on a plane to go do some location shooting! (And didn’t sleep the night before almost at all because I was so nervous.)

My luggage was 3/4 cosplay and only 1/4 stuff for me, and we went off to drive through the Rocky Mountains. 

We went from Banff to Vancouver, along Highway 1 — one of the most gorgeous drives, according to quite a few people, and also me, now that I’ve done it! I also brought two brand new cosplays, because I have never met anything even remotely close to chill. 

First off — the mountains. The mountains are stunning, if you ever get a chance to do this drive (and you like driving), I can absolutely recommend it. 

The first night was Banff and Lake Louise. We got straight off the plane from Calgary, grabbed a Donair (Alberta Donair is so good, y’all), and took off to Banff! 

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”301″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″]Important photos of my Donair, because I was so hungry after militantly wearing a mask since 5AM. 😂

Lake Louise is gorgeous, truly one of the great wonders of the world — if you haven’t seen photos, here’s one I pulled off of Google, and I swear it looks exactly like this in real life: 

Why did I pull one off of Google? Because I’m an idiot, and it turns out that Banff was about 5 degrees above freezing when we showed up, and my cosplay didn’t have gloves. 😂 My hands stopped working basically immediately, so we just powered through and grabbed photos as fast as we could before I froze to death. 

I did take A Selfie in the car before we got there, though! 😂 This is a cosplay I’ve been dying to do for AGES, I’m so excited to finally have him. 

As a side note — there’s a hotel right on Lake Louise, and I’m suddenly obsessed with the idea of staying there specifically so that I could shoot some Final Fantasy IX at Lake Louise in the middle of the winter. It would be so very cold, and so very beautiful, and I wonder how incredibly expensive it would be? 😂

We had two cosplays we wanted to shoot in the area, so we did Link the first night, then went back to the hotel and passed the fuck out, so that we could get into cosplay bright and early the next morning to go back to a nearby lake —

Photo by ConMom Photography, who was my partner in crime on this trip! 

Welcome to Emerald Lake! It’s about an hour North of Lake Louise, technically across the border in BC rather than Alberta, and — here’s the important part — significantly less crowded. We went to Lake Louise late the night before, around 7PM, and it wasn’t too hard to get some space to ourselves, but during daylight hours? Full parking lots, all day long. We had hoped we’d be able to go to Lake Moraine, which is near Lake Louise, but it was just as crowded, so we took one pass through and then went straight to Emerald Lake instead. 

Honestly, it’s just as beautiful as the other lakes — still cold though, since it’s technically more North. 😂 For some reason, I didn’t realize that it was going to be quite so cold in the mountains, probably because we’ve been having insane heat waves for the past two months, and I was not prepared for it to be 5-10 degrees above freezing while I was in cosplay, haha. 

So, note to future me: it’s cold in the mountains! 

Then we hopped back in the car, and made the drive to Revelstoke, which was our second night stop. This was our longest day of driving, because of some construction on the highway we’d planned to drive on, which turned our 2 hour drive into a four and a half hour drive, but the scenery was stunning — and we saw Shaggy White Mountain Goats! And we were too busy yelling at each other to look at the goats to take pictures, of course. But we were very excited. 

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”302″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″]Some more nature for you! The last couple of photos are from the balcony of our BnB in Revelstoke — which, for the record, is also where I had the best burrito of my life. We pulled in and saw a delivery vehicle from a Taco Place, and just decided to order from there. The crispy avocado burrito from The Taco Club in Revelstoke? Omg. To Die for. 

As an added bonus, across the street from our BnB was a little trail that we took a spin down in the morning, and we found this incredibly cursed chair! 

This day was my day off — after the last two days of travel and cosplay, I was pumped to just exist for a day. We drove from Revelstoke to Kelowna — which goes through the valley, and doesn’t have as many mountains, so I didn’t take as many photos. 

Kelowna was an interesting place! Definitely felt like it was a beach town, and it was warmer than in the mountains! Definitely a little strange, though — it’s a really big city, lots of traffic, but everything is low-rise and most things closed at like 7PM. Trying to find dinner after that was a nightmare. (I did wind up eating an Unagi Donburi, though, and it was delicious, you really can’t beat BC for fresh seafood.) 

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”303″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″]Here’s a few shots of Kelowna, including the view from our BnB! The Moon was UNREAL, I’m so sad I couldn’t get a better picture of it with just my phone, it was so huge and red. I sat out on the balcony, freezing my ass off, for like two hours, just watching it rise. 😂

But there was no rest for the wicked, because we had a 10AM checkout and another couple hours of driving to a little down called Hope! It’s surrounded by mountains, and it has some gorgeous nature paths around it, so obviously, I was back out in Cosplay ASAP. 

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”304″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″]Some photos of driving to Hope, around Hope, and then at the Othello Tunnels, which is were we shot some more Link! I did a bunch of careful climbing on places I’m not sure I was actually supposed to be here, but I haven’t actually reviewed the photos yet, so wish me luck! Haha. 

After Hope, we only had one place left — Vancouver! It’s been a while since I’ve been there, so it was definitely nice to be back, even if it rained the entire time we were there. Felt like the Vancouver experience! Luckily, we’d been ready to be exhausted, so we spent the first day doing a walk to get ourselves acquainted with our new neighbourhood, then hunkered down in the AirBnB because we had —

Our own, private hot tub. And a steam room. And a huge soaker tub. All of which I think you’ve already seen, if you were on my Snapchat. 😘

I did some shooting here as well, I wanted to have just a nice, relaxing day, and do some looks! So I shot a little bit of lingerie, and then some Genshin Boys — and then some Genshin Boys in Lingerie, because obviously. Have you met me? It was gonna happen. 

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”305″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″] Can’t show you the two other lingerie looks, they were pretty little. 😈

I hope next time I can be in some of these places longer — we just did a quick spin through everywhere, and I’d really like to have a longer stay at Lake Louise, and in Vancouver! Hopefully next time I can actually see some of my Vancouver friends, and there’ll be less of a Panorama going on. 💕