Need a suggestion for a stopover between Calgary and Banff. Will be traveling with three college age sons and husband enroute to the Fairmont in Banff in July. We'd like to stay somewhere rustic and I would appreciate recommendations for interesting accomodations or activities. Thanks!

Calgary to Banff is a very short trip.
The distance is anywhere from 75 to 90 miles depending on where you originate. Total driving time is usually less than 2 hours.

Why the need to stop over night anywhere enroute?

If you want a place to go just as a different place to stay, I will recommend Mt. Engadine Lodge.
It is a nice place with various types of rooms and great food. There are miles of trails located near there, and at dinner moose often visit the meadow in the valley.

Is it rustic? Well I guess it depends on how you define rustic.
It is on a dirt road south of Banff and generates its own power. The facilities, however, are very nice.

If you want rustic, how about Twin Falls Chalet? It is reached after a 6 mile hike along the Yoho River. The place has no electricity or natural gas. Cooking is on a wood stove and you eat dinner by lamp light with the faint roar of Twin Falls in your ears.

That I call rustic. We have had several great visits there. It may be too rustic, however, for most people.

OOPS Mt. Engadine Lodge is south of
CANMORE!! That is the town on the Trans Canada Highway BEFORE you reach Banff.

Sorry I caught that major slip up. Driving south from Banff is not very easy to do!!

Just back from the library, where I read some of Natinal Geographic Traveller article on great hotels, and the Mount Engadine was mentioned.

The story is in the NG Traveller with a New York skyscraper ont he cover)

BAK

As bob brown has noted, Banff is only a short drive from Calgary, but if you do want to stay en route in an interesting and rustic setting, you might try the Rafter Six Ranch.

http://www.raftersix.com/

These are exactly the kinds of suggestions I was looking for! Thank you! My husband just thought we should check into the Fairmont a day early, but I would like to try something different.

Let me suggest a different ploy.
Before heading west to the Canadian Rockies, why not turn east toward Drumheller and visit the World Heritage Site in Drumheller: The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palenontology.

With children who are college students, I would hope that they have attained an educational level that would make the displays at this fabulous place well worthwhile for them.

The educational program at the museum is really quite good although it is mostly aimed at younger people.

I attended a presentation on the Creatures of the Burgess Shale which was very well presented. The educational staff had constructed large models of those tiny creatures that glowed under "black" light while the staff members narrated summaries of the various creatures.

I was about 70 at the time but, regardless, I found it interesting. The presentation was quite good in that it covered a wide range of ages and interests.

Another skit on the limestone reefs dealt with a greedy oil prospector who got done in by his ignorance of geology. It was witty and very informative as the presenters explained how he was ignorant.

The mounted dinosaur fossils are technically well done, and there are plenty of them. That part of Alberta is rich in Cretacious fossils, including Albertosaurus and T-Rex.

Even though Albert (or Alberta) is smaller than T-Rex, I would not want to wake up and find one snoozing in my front yard.

As John Horner said, we are lucky T-Rex and cousins are dead.

Let's make that paleontology.
I can spell; I just cannot type well.

(I wonder. Had I not called attention to my blunder, how many people would have noticed? Well one did. I, or is it me?

I didn't even notice the misspelling but I thought it was a good idea.

Typically you can mangle the middle of a word and most people will still read it normally.

To be honest, we misspell so much here as we type fast that I rarely pay attention..

I second bob_brown's suggestion. You have a great opportunity to see a one-of-a-kind museum. The town itself is not much, but you can easily stay in Calgary.

I am supposed to know how to spell paleontology. I do it frequently.
I also mangle typing. I also do that frequently. I even bungle typing words like the and and.

It reminds me of the English prof who flunked a football star player in English Comp. The failing grade threatened the player's eligibility for the following season. The coach in a fit of anger stormed into the president's office and demanded that the professor change the grade.

The president, yielding to the coach's demands, after all, the coach made $4 million a yeat to his $800,000, and called the professor in. The prof stuck to his grade and maintained the football player was a functional illiterate who could not even spell simple words.

The coach insisted that the player could so spell. Finally the English prof relented and said that if the player could spell just one word that he would pass him with a D rather than the failing grade of F.

After some wrangling all parties to the dispute agreed on the word coffee. The coach asked for some leeway because coffee was such a long word. The professor relented and said that if the player could get just 2 letters right he would pass him.

So the player was summoned to the president's office where he was to undergo this extemporaneous oral spelling exam. (No requirement to write, you see.)

The president administered the word. Ok X spell coffee, just like what you drink for breakfast.

Player X knotted his brow and thought and thought. Finally he came out with K A U P H Y
coffee.

lol! Ironically, it sounds like a professor I just finished a class under (am going back to school at my "tender" age). It's an online class, and his posts were so mangled that few could understand them. I finally hit on what the problem was, right near the end -- he was using a speech to text technology, and of course it just rendered what he said. We learn to write much better than we speak (for the most part).