This is the second in a series of posts about our bicycling trip down the Icefield Parkway, through Jasper and Banff National Parks in Alberta, Canada. The full series can be found here.
We got up, not early not late, and had breakfast with our hosts Rod and Ivy. We chatted some more, and got to know them better over breakfast: they were from Manitoba originally, moved to Alberta to become farmers/ranchers and raise their kids, then moved to Calgary to run a business with friends for a few years before retiring. Good people, and they had some interesting stories (about themselves and the area), and they also gave us some good advice: Rod has a brother who used to live near Jasper; he used to travel that way often and knew a better, more easterly route than our plan of simply driving backwards up our bike route. It would be less direct but would involve easier highway driving, and we wouldn’t spoil the surprise of our bike route — an important consideration!
We left them with many thanks, did some last-minute shopping, and finally hit the road, with one last stop at this Canadian icon:
Coffee and donuts at Tim Horton’s! We felt very Canadian, but probably blew any cred we had by taking tourist selfies in front of the local gas station…
But we were ready now, and we settled in for our seven hour drive. (We took Rod’s advice.) Most of the way, we were in beautiful but flat farmland, then slowly it became beautiful, rolling farms and forests, and then finally we could see the mountains ahead of us and the scenery started getting dramatic. We also had a moose sighting when it ambled across the road in front of us. (We hear moose sightings are rare, but bear sightings are… not.) The moose escaped the camera eye, but here are some photos taken from the latter part of the drive:
Once we got into town we found the hostel, which was fairly new, and modern, and basically awesome. The first thing we saw were a bunch of elk hanging out in the yard; the guy at the front desk told us they’d called the park to shoo them away, but we didn’t mind as long as we all left each other alone (they can be dangerous, especially ewes with young, like this group). We gave them a wide berth until they moved on, but I did get some pictures:
We got ourselves settled in to our rooms, finished building our bikes, ran a bunch of errands — we had to buy fuel for our camp stoves, bear repellent spray (yikes!) and a few other things we couldn’t take on an airplane, among other things — then grabbed burgers and beers outside at a brewpub, while the sky remained light until well after 10:00.
We’ve arrived!
