Guest photographer Emily

Emily joined me biking for three weeks from Jasper Alberta to Boise Idaho. She picked a great stretch to join. It included the parks I wrote about in my last post as well as Glacier Park in Montana. In Glacier we rode up the beautiful long climb to Logan Pass on Going-to-the-sun road. In Canada a man described it to me as the third prettiest road in North America. The second prettiest was from Jasper to Banff and the first prettiest he said I had just passed. I'll have to go back some day to see if he is right. In Glacier we didn't need to go over the pass so we just turned around after 4 hours of climbing and raced right back to where we camped the night before in less than an hour. It was really a spectacular Park and we spent one warm night biking through it under the light of a full moon, the trees cast moon shadows across the quiet road and the bats fluttered around erratically, as they do.

Continuing through Montana to Missoula we found a cycle tourist gathering. Nearly a dozen cyclists camping in the yard of our super generous host. We took a day off there to rest and watch the world cup. On the way out of town we stopped at the Adventure Cycling Association headquarters as I had done a decade ago on my first bike tour. They had a bike scale and with food and water mine came in at 138 pounds.

From Missoula we crossed into Idaho and caught a brutal heat wave that one day reached 107 degrees. We were in a hot springs area but always opted for a cold river instead. We made a friend along the way, Amanda and her little baby Wiley. She invited us in for tacos and we camped in her yard. She and her husband are forest fire fire fighters. It was especially interesting to hear about because we were biking through the smokey haze of a nearby fire for days.

Emily is an accomplished photography and has a blog about an around-the-world photography trip that you can read about here (Emily goes around the world) . She brought a professional grade camera and lenses and knows how to use them well enough to operate in manual mode. So for this post I am using her photographs. I think we'll all agree that they are very nice and maybe we don't take it a step further and compare them to my typical offering. Let's just say they are both good. As much as she wanted to stay and eschew responsibility she chose the high road and left to start medical school at Harvard, where I'm sure she'll be super successful. Good luck Emily!

 Jasper Park

 A nice place to spend the evening.

 RVs can't get here.

 

 Breakfast!

 Back in the USA!

 Glacier Park.

 Going-to-the-sun road. The pass is the low point in the distance

 I am in this picture if you look closely.

 Biking past a glacier (not really).

 Lake McDonald in Glacier Park.

 A box of cereal and a quart of milk is one of my favorite meals.

 Camp cooking!

  You could live here if you arrived in 1885.

 Idaho.

  Smokey days.

 Town clothes!

 Not a rock star yet.

 It looks windy in this photo, but it wasn't.

Canada the beautiful

From my last post I've been biking south through Jasper Park, then Banff Park and finally Kootenay Park. They were fantastic. One of the most spectacular roads I have ever biked on. The mountains were soaring and the lakes were mirrors of crystal clear water, the streams were ice cold, and every mountain seemed to have a glacier. The camping continued to be great. I slept in the shadows of mountains, at the foot of glacier and next to little blue streams. It has been getting hot and I've been jumping into some of those cold streams, fed by the snow fields above. 

A nice thing about biking through parks are the information signs at road side pull-offs. I learned that the magnificent blue color of the water is the result of glaciers grinding rock into a fine powder that does not precipitate out. The glaciers were always so cool to see and I saw one break off a section that fell over a cliff. I could hear it crash from miles away. The historic photos on display show that nearly all of the glaciers have shrunk by more than a kilometer over the past 100 years. I met a lot of other cyclists on the road too. Including an 81 year old biking from Vancouver to New Jersey. 

South of the parks, I stopped at a convenience store to fill my water when two men approached, Pete and Jeff. I told them my story and they were so impressed that they offered to buy me ice cream and chips and to spend the afternoon swimming at their Lake house and a hot shower and a bed to sleep in if I wanted to stay for dinner. Really they had me at ice cream. The cabin was on Premier Lake. I had passed the turn off for it earlier in the day and wondered if it would live up to the name, it surely did. A beautiful clear Lake tucked into the mountains and warm enough to swim in. I met the neighbors at a party that night and ate steak, wonderful salads, pie and of course, ice cream. It was such a wonderful and relaxing afternoon. I mean, even more relaxing than not working and just biking slowly through pleasant mountain scenery. 

Currently I am in Whitefish Montana. Back in the USA! Canada was great and big. I feel like I was there a long time. The stereotype is true, Canadians are super nice. I'll be back some day. I feel like there is still a lot to explore up there. 

 Flowers for you

 My hosts, Jeff and Pete, at Premier Lake.

 Premier Lake.

 View from my camp site, love those rainbows.

 Still love those rainbows (waterfallbows?).


 I hitchhiked on a train to Edmonton.

 Camping with the Athabasca glacier.

 A waterfall in miniature.

 There were a lot of waterfalls.

 Still more waterfalls.

 Look closely, you'll see a waterfall. Banff National Park.

 Glacier stream.

 Another pass over the continental divide.

 It seemed like every mountain had its own mirror.

 Does this look appetizing to anyone else but me? It was so good.

 I love biking along rivers.

 Moraine Lake, go there if ever you can.

 The bluest lake in the Rockies. Glacier on the left and the road I biked up on the right.

 Reflected mountains are good every time.

 Plenty of cold water for the hot days.

 So nice.

 A fantastic downhill exited through this slot in the canyon.

Back in my America. Barely worse for wear.