Rode a hard climb up to Peyto Lake.
After that, we slid downhill and reached Bow Lake, the source of the Bow River.
Again, the water has a totally mystical element to it.
There was some slightly downhill riding into the town of Lake Louise, so named for the nearby lake. We managed to get some bike supplies that we'd been wanting -- a seatpost (to replace mine that has been slowly slipping down thanks to a botched install job from building up my shipped bike) and water bottles (to replace the ones Gabe forgot at Glacier Skywalk). I got really lucky with the seatpost. I wouldn't expect a normal bike shop to necessarily have it in stock, but here it was in some tourist town's sporting goods shop.
After lunch, we opted out of seeing Lake Louise itself, given the intense sightseeing we'd already done. Entering Bow Valley Parkway, we saw another black bear browsing the shrubs along he road. We named him Benny. He was fat. Didn't even bother getting a picture.
When we pulled up to our target campground, we found out it was closed! Yikes. Gabe had been nursing a tight and hurt IT band muscle for much of the day, so we had to carefully consider the options. There were campgrounds only several more miles up the road, so we decided to gingerly keep going, minimizing stops, since getting off and on the bike was harder on Gabe.
When we arrived at Castle Mountain Campground, we bikes around it with increasing dread at each reserved spot. Ugh. Full. It was now 4:15p on a Friday, and camps closer to Banff would likely be even more full. We decided to go back maybe a quarter mile to a motel and hostel complex. The motel was $400, and there was one spot! I biked over to the hostel and saw a FULL sign, so sped back. Matt was nowhere to be found, so Gabe and I made the executive decision to take a room, price be damned. It was late for trying to keep going, and Gabe could use the rest.
Matt eventually comes back, saying he'd talked to the proprietor of the hostel, who was patrolling his property with a can of bear mace, looking for a large male grizzly. Some other cyclists passing through corroborated, and said they'd seen that animal just up the road, where we had been. So of course Matt jetted back out to see the grizzly, forgetting to take our shared can of bear mace.
Gabe and I settled into honestly very comfortable quarters, which took a bit of the sting out of the price:
A big relief to not have to pitch tents for camp.
So we rest tonight and take a short jaunt into Banff tomorrow.
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