September 6th, 2015

What happened…

Andrew writes:My feet weren’t cold last night, which I see as a plus. The only sounds we could hear outside of the tent when we woke up this morning were cars stopping at the rest area, and tourists popping out to take photos. A lot of people seemed to be stopping, which I thought was weird being 0900hrs on a Sunday. So I popped my head out of the tent vestibule, and WOW. The skies had mostly cleared, and all around us the mountains had changed from brown and green to stark white.

I was reminded of the beautiful Rockies I had experienced on my ride in April 2014, where the snow cast a heavenly glow all around. When the sun hits the slopes it shimmers gold and silver; absolutely breathtaking. Amanda seemed pretty impressed too. So we packed up all of our gear and enjoyed a lovely breakfast, with the scenery serving as dessert.

Now had we known that we were only 7km from a campground when we called it quits two days ago, I think we would have just kept going. It was mostly downhill anyways. Except we didn’t know, and we did stop – so well, whatever. We end up being $50 richer I guess since the campground was $25/night. The gateway to Waterton Lakes Nat’l Park soon followed and we cycled along the Kootenai Brown cycle path the 10km into the town.

I think of the parks we have seen over the last two months, this one is the prettiest. Having fresh snow helps, but the way that the park is situated, with mountains and plains both in abundance it is really unique. We saw a lone bison as we rode past the bison paddock. We stopped to check out the high-tea room at the Prince of Wales Hotel ($30/pp). We considered different places along the bicycle path for possible wild camping later in the day too. Then we pulled into Pearl’s Cafe and the whole day changed.

Pearl’s has amazing food, and boasts just as amazing coffee, but I can only speak for the stellar pizza that Amanda and I shared. Chock-full of cheese and meat, it lived up to its’ price tag. In addition, no sooner had we sat down, than Petra, from Germany came over and sat and talked with us. She is having quite an adventure on her 1-year sabbatical from teaching. She has kayaked off of the coast of Vancouver Island, and cycled in Australia. She is currently driving a car she bought in Vancouver down to the Grand Canyon. We talked with her for over an hour and she invited us to share her camping spot in town. Yay, a hot shower!

Petra invited us to hike, but instead we caught up on some website stuff. Then with the sun shining, we made out way to the town campground and setup shop. The covered shelter in our section of the campground was busy! We spent most of our time cooking and whatnot chatting with people from Canmore and Edmonton. I whipped up a chicken alfredo pasta for the three of us, and probably the highlight was when around 2000hrs a trio of deer paraded themselves through the campground, unafraid. It was pretty cool.

Amanda writes: We rode into Waterton which was only 20 kilometres from where we camped. The ride was lovely and as soon as you head into the park, there is a designated bike path. As Andrew said the park is lovely with the town settled in the mountains. The Prince of Wales hotel is beautiful and while high tea would have been nice, not worth the $30 for us.

We met Petra and it was a wonderful. I had such a nice time chatting with a woman traveller. We meet many travellers who can chat, but somehow I found Petra so easy to talk to and such a delight. We chatted for over and hour and while I wanted to go for the drive/hike she offered, I still wasn’t feeling 100%. The restful day was nice as was the campsite. Hot showers, good chats and a great day.

Today’s Photographs