We had one of the coldest start to the day so far on the trip. We were really glad we had stayed indoors for the night. It was so cold that even my long-finger full glove that I had bought in MEC at Calgary wasn’t enough to keep my fingers warm. We ended up having to buy some gloves from a local hunting store so that we could keep going with getting frostbite on my fingers!
Although cold, it was a beautifully sunny morning, and the scenery was utterly spectacular. There was a paved bike road off the highway that we were able to take for most of the way from Canmore until Banff National Park. In Banff National Park they had built a brand new paved bike route from the entrance of the park, almost all the way to Banff. It said it was going to be completed in Spring of 2011, but it looked already completed (except for a few minor sections) and people were using it so we managed to get on it eventually (it was difficult because it was on the opposite side of the divided highway so we had to wait for a crossing). The bike route was very nice as we could really enjoy the scenery being off the highway. It was too cold in the shade to stand, but if you were in the sun it was quite nice.
We stopped for lunch and ate it indoors in Banff. It was quite exciting entering the town as we had to cross a texas gate. They are used to keep the wildlife off the highway. They are basically a huge grid with a deep drop below to prevent animals from walking across it. You off to get off from your bike to cross it, but they are still a bit of a challenge to cross on a fully loaded bike.
After lunch, we decided to push onto Lake Louise as the weather was supposed to turn foul for the next several days, and we really wanted to do the Bow Valley Parkway to Lake Louise in good weather. This was again, by far the most spectacular cycling we have ever done. It even warmed up so much that we had to get down to shorts and a t-shirt. We made many stops along the way. This section of the park is famous for wildlife viewing from the road, but being a Saturday there was enough traffic to keep them far away from the road.
Later in the day the sky clouded over and the temperature started to drop, but the scenery was still very impressive. When we eventually arrived in Lake Louise, we went straight to the hostel. There was no one at the counter for about 15 min, and there was a line up by the time the person returned. It was $40 a person, so a pricey $80 a night for us, but they had no room left! We were very surprised since we had checked earlier in the day for availability and they had a lot, but that is the case on a Saturday night even at the end of September. The girl at the counter was not very nice, and we were quite surprised she could keep her job with the attitude that she had. To add insult to injury she told us it was supposed to snow 15cm overnight (we had known it would be a mix of rain and snow so we didn’t believe her over exaggeration). Other than the campground, the only other accommodations available were $200+ a night. A little disappointed, we headed to the campground to tough it out for the night.
The man at the campground kiosk was very nice, and made us feel very welcomed. He gave us the site closest to the cooking shelter (yay!) and the showers and bathrooms. They had free firewood which was music to our ears on such a cold evening. The campground was neat as the whole tenting section (which was an entire campground on its own) had an electric fence all around it to keep the bears out. They had only put it up in 2003, so before then they probably had many problems with people interfering with bears and vice versa.
We had expected the campground to be empty (especially the tenting area), but to our surprise there were many others tenting! Likely tourists like us who expected the weather to be the seasonal 16 degrees and not around 0 with rain and snow! After we had set the tent up, we decided to go to the cooking shelter as it had started to rain. In the shelter we met 3 people from France (two engineers and a nurse!) and a man from Northern Ontario. There was also an older couple from England who were very chatty. The people from France had gotten the wood stove going in the shelter, and it was very very warm when you were next to it. When you were in the shelter, it didn’t matter that it was raining and 0 degrees outside! The only minor issue was the shelter was quite drafty as there were 4 large openings on either side of the building which you couldn’t do much about, but we were beyond happy to be by the wood stove. The man from Ontario had told us the night before they had snow blowing into the shelter, so a few Germans and them had put up the picnic tables against the opening.
The evening turned out to be much better than anything we could have expected, and even in our tent we were very warm, dry and comfortable for the night despite the cold rain.
Trip Around The World 
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