Flights to Calgary went without a hitch. Don arrived from California within 15 minutes of me and the shuttle to Banff and Canmore was only another 20-minute wait. Assembling the bikes took almost an hour and we did it in a hotel parking lot and put the boxes in their dumpster. Even better, the hotel had wireless so we were able to send home a few photos and messages.

We’d decided to get off the shuttle in Canmore because of it’s proximity to the trail and a campground right in town. It was 7:45 by the time we were rolling, and we decided a good meal was in order. Yelp! showed an Italian restaurant close by. The food was excellent but the service from the kitchen unbelievably slow. Since we’d decided to start riding that night instead of camping in town, I actually asked to pay the check before our food arrived in anticipation of leaving the restaurant just after 9PM. One more stop on the way to the trail yielded two 12″ Subway sandwiches.

Unbeknownst to us, the Great Divide race this year was detoured thru Canmore and we all had a surprise having to climb an hour-or-more-long dirt road ascent to a reservoir. For us it was probably more pleasant because we were cycling in lower temps and with less recreational traffic. The longer evening daylight let us cycle until after 11 pm without a headlamp. The Spay Lake campground was our destination and we got there shortly after midnight. Neither of us had filled our water bottles yet because we’d planned to do that at the first stop. We never found the official campground and pitched our tents in the overflow parking lot. In the morning we learned that it was $20 and the water was at a trailhead down the road.

Slow start that morning with more gear adjustments for Don, because his new front bags came with me from Durango.  On the second night we found a traveler’s cabin and made ourselves at home.