Day 4: Saskatchewan River Crossing to Blue River
We didn't sleep very well last night.
Yes, it was freezing cold and we were shivering in our sleeping bags, but we also set up our tent over top of a tiny hill so we couldn't sleep totally flat, our legs and heads were slightly lower than our torso and dammit we were not going out into the freezing cold to move the tent in the middle of the night!
We wake up with aching backs, very reluctant to climb onto our bikes.
To warm ourselves up, we treat ourselves to a hot breakfast and tea. I make my world-famous corned beef hash from scratch. I'm so glad we brought the cooking stove, it's so nice to have something hot at the end of the riding day and at the start of one as well.
Still cold when we leave later on in the morning. 5°C. Ugh.
We fish out the cables for our heated liners and plug in for the ride, which makes the freezing temperatures a lot more bearable. I gotta look into seeing if I can plug these liners into some kind of portable battery for when we're inside our sleeping bag. Wouldn't that be nice!
Hwy 93 just south of Jasper is also known as the world-famous Columbia Ice Fields Parkway. This is one of the most anticipated parts of our trip.
I'm all bundled up and plugged in! Bring it on!
It keeps gets colder and colder the higher we climb up into the glaciers. Mountains, older than recorded history, stare down at us with disinterest while we in turn look up at them and gaze with wonder. It is so beautiful here.
We continue ascending and the temperature keeps dropping. We stop often at scenic pull-outs to take in all the wonderful nature surrounding us.
This is the road that we just came up from:
What is she taking a picture of?
Ah, nice! The lighting and colouring makes this picture look almost computer-generated!
Neda is really bonding well with her new bike. She's always been more into sport-touring motorcycles than adventure bikes. This is apparent when we gas up our bikes. Despite both our motorcycles having the exact same engine, she is always putting in a litre more than I am at the pumps despite her streamlined fairings and panniers. She tells me she likes to ride one gear lower than me so she has instantaneous throttle response from the 1250cc boxer twin engine. Can you fall in love with an engine? Because I think she has...
We pull into the parking lot just outside of Athabasca Glacier and ask another tourist to snap a family portrait of us and our bikes.
We've had to supplement the heated liners with our rain jackets to keep all the heat in since we are wearing mesh over the liners. We're very warm and super-comfy and loving life in the Rocky Mountains.
You see those little dots on the glacier behind us?
ENHANCE:
You can charter a bus tour that will take you on the glacier. But that's $$$ and we are staying with our bikes this trip. It'd be pretty cool to take a motorcycle up the glacier with studded tires though...
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and the Hyw 93 descends down into Jasper where the temperatures have risen to a balmy 20°C in the afternoon sun. We gas up and munch down on some pistachio nuts while checking the map to see where would be a good place to stop for the night. We've only done 150 kms this morning and Valemount on Hwy 5 is only another 150 kms away.
From Jasper, we take TC-16 west to Hwy 5 and then southbound, pointed towards the Okanagan Valley once again.
When we reach Valemount, we find that we're still not tired and it's still fairly early in the day. We're at a bit of a dilemma here. There's a really nice campsite here at Valemount, but if we keep on going the only other campsite in our budget is at Blue River and that one doesn't have any good reviews. But if we ride further today, it will really cut down our last travel day back to Kelowna tomorrow.
We decide to press on to Blue River.
As predicted, the camp site is a bit of dump, kind of run down and there are lots of mosquitoes everywhere. Our neighbours are very loud and they've turned up their stereos full blast in their pick-up trucks. I hope this doesn't continue on into the night.
Chilli for dinner again. While listening to our neighbours' tunes. At least we'll get a really warm night's sleep tonight. Forecast is a low of 10°C. Not too bad especially considering it was below freezing the night before.
Costs for Day 4 per person:
Lodging: $13.65 (they took Visa which is nice since we were running low on cash. I think if we had paid cash we would have saved on the sales tax)
Gas: $18.53
Food: ~$10 (gonna be generous since we did have two large meals today)
Total: $42.18
Pretty good!
Thankfully our neighbours turn down their stereos shortly after sun set and we settle in for a warm night's sleep.
goo.gl
