Eldon

All praise Newton, for yesterday's Up was complemented perfectly with today's Down, as I freewheeled speedily south through an alpine heaven interrupted only by the brutal tourist intersection at Saskatchewan River Crossing where heards of air-conditioned zombies were off-loaded from coaches to feed, water, and browse the huge array of bear and mountain-themed tat on sale.

After a quick stop in for fuel, I continued on and the views just kept getting better, what with the near-perfectly mirrored mountains shimmering in Bow Lake and bordered by a rainbow of wild Asters, FireWeed and Indian Paintbrush. Then the huge climb up to look down upon the vivid cyans and turquoises in Peyto Lake. Astounding.

Then who should I cycle by but my biker-ballerina-self-proclaimed-"dork" friend Katrina! So we moseyed on together down into Lake Louise, and had some early lunch at a cafe, chatting happily and comparing pet photos. I've found that I can get quite easily attached to people during this tour - since for 3 months I've hardly ever seen the same person for more than a day, three day's of even brief interaction can feel falsely magnified into a friendship, and so I was strangely sad to say goodbye as our roads split.

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With a struggling cafe WiFi connection barely managing to show potential campsites along the route I saw that my next step, Marble Canyon, had only 3 available pitches left and frustratingly could only be booked >=2 days in advance - WTF. It was just midday, 20 miles to go and a load of RVs to beat to the spots... the race was on.

After a speedy and difficult slog to get there, hoping every RV and caravan that passed wasn't going to Marble Canyon, I finally arrived, raced into the campground, rudely overtaking a car and RV, and hunting frantically for the essential green "Available" sign....of which there were none. My heart sank before I realised that only a small proportion of sites were reserveable, and there were at least 20 available on a First Come First Served basis...all that racing effort I'd put in and I'd just read the web site wrong. 🤦🏼‍♂️

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A successful mattress repair, and having dropped some altitude into warmer climes, I finally managed a much needed good night's sleep. Well rested, emotionally a little more balanced, and with less risk of clinging on to random people, I zoomed at crazy break-neck, white-knuckle speeds (49.2mph!) down mountain sides, along valleys and into Radium Hot Springs. Along the way I met a lovely German called Steph, cycling a huge 4-panniered bike + trailer; she wasn't very happy about the hills and had had to push her rig up several steep gradients today for hours. We were aiming for the same campground so that evening, after pitching, we shared a beer, some laughs, and our war stories on a picnic bench. Nice.

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Next stop, the bookend that is a chap called Rawly. Remember National Geographic Brent from Nova Scotia over 3000miles ago? Well he'd set me up with one of his best friends in Kimberley who he used to work with running dog sleighs in the north. Visiting Brent, then finally getting to Rawley, has had an almost 'First Milestone / Last Milestone' position in my head for some time, so I'm looking forwards to it.

It seems a stupid thing to say but the last leg of this journey feels just a little bit closer than normal tonight.Read more