To Lake Louise: asking to share a camping site

September 8, 2007

We sleep well in our shelter, no rangers or animals come to disturb us. It is cold though in the morning, below freezing. But our tent and all our gear is dry thanks to the shelter and the fire last night. We have a cup of coffee and cereal bar, planning for a bigger breakfast at Saskatchewan Crossing about 10km from here. The sky has cleared overnight and we get nice views of the mountain, until the crossing where the valley is filled with dense fog and makes it feel even colder.

There is another ritzy hotel/motel a restaurant that does serve a la carte, but over $10 for eggs, bacon and hash browns, it is a better deal to go for the buffet. So we pig out and fill ourselves. Riding after so much food is a bit tough especially since we immediately start climbing towards Bow Pass. It starts off rather steep, we break out of the mist and get some awesome views. Glad we didn't do this in the rain yesterday. The weather soon deteriorates though, by the time we reach Bow pass there is a cold wind and dark clouds are blowing in over the continental divide...we hope not a repeat of yesterday.

Instead of all downhill to Lake Louise we have quite a bit of flat and a couple of climbs and with a slight headwind makes the going tough. Patrick doesn't feel well, blame the upset stomach on a ham sandwich we just had, but Rachel has no problems...except being tired. Patrick starts envisioning taking a cabin or motel room in Lake Louise. So our first stop in town is the information center where we are told the cheapest rooms available go at $158 plus tax of course. It has become obvious the Canadian National Parks have gone upscale and mostly cater to the busloads of Asian tourists that drop lots of money here. Unless you search around like we do it is not possible to travel here on a tight budget. So it's camping again tonight, fortunately the weather has cleared again.

The problem with camping is that the sites area about $25, and they check your parks pass as well, ours expired yesterday morning....so we sneak in. We follow a walking trail along the river to bypass the guard station, then cross the river and into the tent camping area that is surrounded by an electric fence to keep out the bears....riding around we see three mountain climbers who have all their gear spread out in their site. We start talking and are offered to share the site for free. Rob, Mark and Lance are from Maine and are planning to climb some mountains around here.

We put up our tent once they are done packing, take a hot shower and fix macaroni and cheese with tuna steak and baked beans.