Day 94 – Calgary to Canmore – 1 degree Celsius yet a trip highlight day

We said good bye to Katie and Ken, and headed out in the cold 1 degree Celsius (a record low for our trip..). It is much colder than 1 degrees when you are biking and creating your own wind! It was cloudy but we had a tail wind which made things a little more tolerable. We took the amazing paved bike path across the entire city of Calgary.

In Tuscany, we stopped at the Starbucks to have our lunch and get a hot drink to warm up. There we met a young guy who was very excited to see us. It turns out him and his wife had done a cross-country cycling trip in the past as well. He was very nice and said that we would enjoy the trip through the rockies. For the first time on our trip since Quebec, it felt like an area where there were many former and current touring cyclists!

After lunch, we got on highway 1A, The traffic was very busy but it had a good wide paved shoulder. At Cochrane we tried to visit the visitor centre but it was closed for the season (relocated to a place further away for the winter). It’s still mid-September, are we that off the beaten path now?

After Cochrane the traffic was much quieter. But also further along the shoulder on the road disappeared completely and it was now a two lane road with absolutely no shoulder, not even a gravel section. Luckily the traffic was so quiet that we almost never had traffic going in both directions at the same time. We pushed on towards the Rockies, with the sun coming out from time to time. The Rockies were covered in clouds and looked very ominous.

When we finally arrived to the foothills of the Rockies, the sky started to clear and the sun came out. It was near perfect timing. The temperature was much more tolerable in the sun, but with the spectacular scenery that was unveiled it really didn’t matter. From this point on to Canmore became one of my favorite cycling on the entire trip.

As we approached Canmore we decided to stay at a hostel for the night because of the cold temperatures. The toughest part of biking the whole day was taking a gravel uphill to the HI Alpine Club of Canada Hostel. When we finally got there after huffing and puffing (the thinner air was definitely noted!) we were in awe of how nice the hostel was. There was evening a wedding going on here the next day. By far the nicest hostel I had ever been to. Unfortunately, because of the wedding and a large group booking, they didn’t have any beds available! We were very disappointed but they called the hostel in town to let us know that there was a lot of availability there. We continued into town which was only a 5 min bike ride away, and down the big hill we had just climbed. If we had known about the hill we could have called ahead, but there are somethings you just won’t know until after the fact..

The hostel in town was not as nice, but still quite nice. We ended up getting an entire 4-bedroom to ourselves since the hostel was so empty. They had an amazing kitchen with all the kitchen equipment, appliances, and utensils you could think of. We had a huge plate of lentils with rice, which was very delicious, and more importantly, very filling!

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