If you've ever thought of doing this ride, well get off your butt and do it.

Pre June 15th would be magic with few or no cars for a good portion of the ride, but if you did it midweek, any time until late September would be great.

You need to be prepared to camp, at least one night, as services are few and far between on two of the three days. 

And for those folks who are riding across Canada (or portions thereof), skip Calgary and ride the Highwood if you are going east. It truly does rival the Ice Fields parkway and it seems that very few people do it.

This was a great trip for us. We hit the weather jackpot on this one, not always a certainty in early June here, and the length and variety of each day was just right. Challenging enough to feel that you really earned something, but not so much that you were thrashed at the end of each day. And although our feet were wet and cold, it was kind of fun to have a small bit off snow left at the very summit of the pass. Not something that you get on every bike tour!

Thanks to the rest of the crew, Kirsten and Andrew for another great mini-tour. 

As soon as we got back in the on-line world on Tuesday afternoon, we found out that we were all eligible for our second shots! I signed up and got mine on 5th June, and Kirsten will be getting hers soon too. Hopefully this means that there will be more tours, and probably longer ones, to come this year!

But for now, so long pardner and happy trails!

As a final note I'll give a shout out to Corb Lund and his vocal public activism to make people aware of the surreptitious campaign by our current provincial gov't to authorize new coal mining on the eastern slopes of the Rockies ... the very area we were riding through ... after more than 40 years of development bans. The world doesn't need another coal mine ... and certainly not here! Thanks Corb for being a very public voice to stop this!

Cows, not coal!