Long Day to Banff

We got our thunderstorm about 11 p.m. last night.  I heard a few drops of rain hit the tent and scrambled to seal off the front of my tent.  Rain came down hard for about 40 minutes along with some delicious flash lightning.  I loved it...kept checking my tent and while there was a small amount of spray getting in through the mesh sides, I'm generally happy.  I'll just continue to tweak it...practice makes perfect, eh?  Patty's tent was stellar.  It was reminiscent of that night in Ponca City, Oklahoma a few years ago on my 50/50/50, when Karen sent me a text from her tent that read, "I just looked up Ponca City...it's in the middle of Tornado Alley...what the hell are we doing here?"

I stopped at a little mission church that was built around 1875...when tribes in southern Alberta were still hunting bison.  The church was the hub of a thriving community called Morleyville, and pastored by George McDougal who moved his little family to the prairies of Alberta to minister to the fur traders.

Hwy 1A, also known as the Bow River Trail, is an excellent road for riding.  The shoulders are good, though you lose them about 15 miles west of Cochrane.  No worries...there is little traffic.  Patty met me about 15 miles east of Canmore and we fought a stiff headwind.  We were getting a lot closer to the mountains...I'm not sure if that's the reason for the wind or not.  The mountains pictured here are called the three sisters...when they have snow on top, they look like three nuns.

I stopped at Gap Lake for a break and a bite to eat and Patty...having ridden back to her car, was rescuing a young mom.  Jennifer and Sebastian were out for a ride when Sebastian got a flat on his trail-a-bike.  Patty convinced them to lock the bikes to a pole and drove them home.

Originally, we were going to stay with a Warm Showers host in Canmore, but she was out of town, so we opted to ride the extra 15 miles and spend 3 nights in Banff.  It will be nice not to have to break camp for a few mornings.  I rode a bike path from Canmore to Harvie Heights on the east side of Trans Canada 1.  I knew the path ended and I would have to hop on the freeway, (think I-84) but what I didn't know was that there is also a path on the west side of the freeway.  I could see the cyclists.  So...I crossed two lanes of freeway traffic, paused in the median until there was an opening, and then crossed the other two lanes of traffic.  Sorta looked like "Frogger".

We are at Tunnel Mountain I...the tents are up and drying, we've had showers and a most delicious meal at The Bison.  Patty had bison ravioli and scallops in a squash purée with a Caesar salad and I had a bison burger with fingerling potatoes and a Red Rock cider.  We are stuffed and heading for bed.  I have several large mosquitoes lounging around the outside of my tent, waiting for that bison burger to become red blood cells.