Banff to Bow Valley Provincial Park - The Mountains Meet the Plains

Wednesday - July 17 - The Alberta Flood of 2013 becomes real.

The first thing we found out was that the very nice bike path that parallels the Trans Canada Highway to Canmore was closed due to flood damage.

Fortunately, the highway has a wide shoulder and traffic was relatively light. The path sure did look tempting though.

The water moved a LOT of gravel.

Who knows how tall these trees were before the flood!

We made a stop for breakfast #2, the post office and visited the local quilt shop. It was a good thing we were on bikes or Donna would have had a hard time leaving without a bunch of fabric.

From Canmore we started following the Bow Valley Trail. In this part of Alberta many roads are called "Trails". This one parallels the Trans Canadian on the other side of the Bow River. This grass is called Foxtail Barley and it really is pink (i.e., no photoshop manipulation at all) and danced so gracefully in the wind.

This section had several large plants hidden in the hills. This one makes cement. According to a local, one of their giant off-road dump trucks was buried by gravel from the flood.

A month after the flood they are still dealing with its aftermath.

Our lunch stop. Weariness was evident in many of the patrons and employees of this cafe in the little town of Exshaw. We had a little rain right after lunch but it didn't last very long. The rain jackets stayed on though because all those clouds kept it a little on the cool side.

Seems like all of a sudden that we are seeing the eastern edge of the Rockies after being surrounded by mountains since we left Vancouver 3 weeks ago.

Our destination for the night.

Home, sweet home......except for the mosquitos...and there were a LOT OF THEM. We were right across the road from the river. There weren't any bear boxes in the campsites so we had to take showers in shifts. Doug didn't really need to bother as he got caught in a thunderstorm downpour on his way back to the tent site.

Fortunately, the camp store had ONE bear box which they kindly brought to our site after dinner so we didn't have to post a guard all night :) We guess they didn't want to have any cyclists eaten either. Actually all the parks and campgrounds in B.C. and Alberta have a very vigorous "Clean Campsite" policy which has been very successful in minimizing bear/human interactions.