This is the ninth 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 ate and packed up, and then we said goodbye to Mosquito Creek and our benefactor Tim. I got one last photo before we took off:
Our route continued downhill, from Mosquito Creek to the iconic mountain town of Lake Louise. This was our second-shortest ride day and probably our easiest, and the day we said goodbye to the Icefields Parkway.
The day’s weather was pretty variable: sunny one moment and raining the next, but this was a pleasant ride, and it was over too soon. We came to the end of the Icefields Parkway, passing the huge line of cars lined up to get into the park and eventually coming to the end of our road. At this point we had to get on the Trans-Canada Highway — the main road through Canada, and basically the equivalent of an Interstate — and ride the shoulder through a tunnel to take the Lake Louise exit. We made it!
Our lodgings were at the Lake Louise Hostel, which was modern, very nice, and similar to the one in Jasper except that it also had a really good restaurant. We were a bit early and couldn’t check in yet, but we were able to drop our stuff off, then we grabbed lunch at a nearby restaurant and did some necessary shopping before checking in. Some photos of our first views of town — I took these at a picnic area behind the town shopping center, which was pretty much the whole town except for a few hotels:
Anne and I opted for showers and a nap, while Julie rode up to the actual lake. The weather continued to deteriorate…
We got up, then got a hi-top table at the hostel’s restaurant — the equivalent of their bar, and the only spot we could get without a reservation. We got a beer and ordered some shared plates. We were into our second beer and wondering if we should send out the Mounties to go find Julie when we saw her come into the hostel, looking like a drowned rat. She went to shower and change, then met us at our table. We ordered dinner, hi-top or no, and heard her tale: it seems the ride from town to the actual lake is up a steep, curvy mountain road, and when she got there it was a tourist madhouse — she estimated 10,000-15,000 people in all. The it started to rain in earnest and all the other tourists started to leave, and she decided that she would take a bus back to town, the tiny road just wasn’t safe with all those people and the rain. She got on the bus line with the thousands who were doing the same, befriended her neighbors in line and got to know them, found out that she needed money for the bus so her new friends gave her the $2.00 fare, and eventually she got down the mountain and here she was! We drank a toast to her Canadian benefactors.
