Johnston Canyon – 30 min from downtown Banff is the Johnston Canyon with 2 waterfalls. The one-way hiking distance from the main parking lot to the Johnston Canyon Lower Falls is 0.75 miles. It’s an additional 0.8 miles to hike to the Johnston Canyon Upper Falls (for a total of 1.55 miles one-way). This is a heavily trafficked 3.2 mile roundtrip trail of (mostly) catwalks running along the side of the canyon, offering views of the lower and upper falls. You can easily spend half a day here.
There is a cave beside the Lower Falls and we get a different view of the falls from inside the cave.
Canmore – Straddling the banks of the Bow River and encircled by Canadian Rockies, this town has a strollable downtown filled with boutiques and fine dining and is about 20 minutes from Banff downtown. Our Airbnb was located in this town and on last day afternoon, after lunch, we spent about 2-3 hours walking around the town, window shopping and hanging out near the Bow River.
After spending the 5 night at the Airbnb in Canmore, we drove to down to Calgary airport to take the flight back to Pittsburgh. We were able to visit all the sights we had planned to visit, thanks to the wonderful weather throughout the trip. If we had an extra day, we would have spent it in Jasper National park.