Today we woke up in the basement of the Lutheran church and headed straight to the local clinic.
John and Arne scheduled an appt for 10am and Katherine joined. The infection in John's hands had progressed considerably to both hands and Arne's began to return to his ears even after antibiotics. The doctor, from South Africa, basically said we all had a staph infection and put us on a strong dose of the most effective antibiotic. Luckily the treatment is already working great!
After lunch we started on a little hike in the hills behind Jasper. We didn't make it very far because Ken had to get back to pick up his new rim and spokes, of which his old had cracked. However, Arne continued up pretty high above the town to a lake for spectacular views on a lake and even saw a small water spout up there.
Leaving Jasper our French companion Nathan was nowhere to be seen so we left a note for him and headed out of town. We did however see Nathan on our way out of town and he was unaware we were leaving. Language barrier! We have yet to see him a day later... Not sure if he is trying to catch up or not.
We headed into the park and paid out $20 a day fee and rode through the spectacular views of Jasper. They were truly spectacular!
Snow capped mountains, turquoise rivers, and a beautiful sunset. We even stopped at a nice waterfall before we reached the hostel.
Arriving at the hostel we were amazed that our room would cost $108 and not $56 like the flyer said in Jasper. Two years prior prices! Yikes! And for a rustic hostel too! No running water or flushing toilets! Oh well...
We ended the night with our typical camping cuisine of coos coos, kinwa, lentils, and chicken stock and hit the sack to dream about our 11 percent grade awaiting us the next day.
-JS
9/7
None of our alarms went off! Our early plans for the day failed, but it was an incredibly beautiful day nonetheless. We rode through most of the Icefield Parkway (one of the top 3 most beautiful roads in the world).
Almost the entire day was uphill to reach the Columbia Glacier, including 2.5 miles of a high grade incline.
The incline was worth it because were able to see tons of glacier blue rivers, snow capped peaks, and at our highest point we were almost level to the glacier ice field.
After the summit we coasted down a major incline, and stumbled onto a beautiful waterfall along the way. During the afternoon the moon was out in the clear bue sky.
We ate our lunch with an awesome view of the glacier.
We enjoyed a relaxing evening by the fire reflecting back on the incredible scenery of the day.
-KSG
9/8
Woke up to a crisp cool morning at 7 am. After some coffee and oatmeal to warm us up from the near freezing temps we were on our way. The first half hour was very cold as the morning sun was entirely blocked by the mountains.
The scenery was again great, with rocky, snow capped mountains and deep turquoise lakes.
The riding consisted of about 30 miles uphill in the morning, and 27 downhill in the afternoon. Arne and john biked up a side road to peyto glacier at the summit, abd caught up to ken and katherine in lake louise.
We got in early to lake louise, and after deciding to trek on up there tomorrow, we had some time to buy some groceries, a few local beers, grill some burgers, and have some tim-tams and hot chocolate around a campfire.
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