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This morning started at 6am when someone else in the dorm had their alarm go off and they didn’t shut it off for 20 minutes when I finally gave up trying to sleep and decided to start the day. I then had to wait until 7:30 for to have breakfast because I couldn’t find anywhere open earlier than that within walking distance.

After breakfast I sat down at the hostel and planned my day using the Edmonton bike map. The city has marked bike routes, though they turned out to be normal streets with no special reason to make them more accessible to bikes other than being signed to warn motorists that there may be bikes on the road.

The first part of the day was simply riding through the parks along the river where there are off street bike paths. They seemed like nice enough parks but there really wasn’t much to see from the path I was on. There were also a lot more hills than I was expecting because it dipped in and out of the river valley several times.

After crossing the river I headed through downtown to MEC to replace my sunglasses which I lost earlier in the week and buy a few other small things. From there I went out to the West Edmonton Mall where I spent most of the afternoon wandering around. I also watched Pirates of the Carribean to kill a couple hours. The mall didn’t seem that special to me. If it weren’t for the ice rink, waterpark and other special features, it wouldn’t have even seemed that big.

On my way back to the hostel in the evening I went to the University of Alberta to use the internet and post my updates for the week. I had to get a temporary user-id and password from to use the computers, but it didn’t cost anything. I’m going to try to use libraries for the internet from now on.

I was woken by a thunderstorm at about 5:20 and quickly packed everything to move into the covered shelter. This included my tent which I carried while fully setup so that I would be able to put it away in a dry place. While having breakfast undercover, the rain stopped but I decided to wear my raingear for the ride anyways since the sky hadn’t cleared yet and the roads were still wet.

I was riding by about 7:30 and noticed pretty quickly that the land is getting flatter. I could see hills the road went over on the horizon about 10km away. When I stopped for my first break I got a flat tire from a tiny, pointed rock being forced through my tired. I bet if I hadn’t stopped in that exact location with my weight on top of it, it wouldn’t have managed to poke it’s way through. It didn’t actually let much air out but I discovered it when I heard the water on the road bubbling.

From the road I called the hostel in Edmonton to book 2 nights (tomorrow is going to be a rest day). At about the half way point (it’s hard to tell because the distance signs to Edmonton weren’t always consistent with each other) I stopped to take off my rain gear because I seem to have left most of the clouds behind and it was getting warmer.

I stopped at the Wabamun Lake Provincial Park for lunch. At this point I started to notice my allergies starting to bother me again. It’s probably the cottonwood trees. After lunch there continued to be nowhere good to stop for a break so I rode the final 80km to Edmonton and the hostel with only 2 breaks. The first break was at the Spruce Grove visitors center (the last town before Edmonton) and the second was in Edmonton when I got my second flat tire of the day only 6km from the hostel. This was a pinch flat caused by the bumpy, cracked, and uneven roads of Edmonton. Combined perhaps with not having pumped enough air into the tire after the earlier flat (I never know exactly how much air to put in it). I replaced the tube and put more air in than before and was on my way to check in at the hostel.

This hostel wasn’t as nice as the one in Golden and was also much more crowded. Only slightly cheaper too ($52 for 2 nights). I was in a dorm of 8 beds, all of which were full. After settling in I walked up and down Whyte Street looking for somewhere to eat. I was in the mood for a pizza and eventually settled on Boston Pizza after failing to find anything more local that had what I was looking for.

In the evening I did some laundry and sat down in the common area to read. A large group of international students just arriving in Edmonton to attend the University of Alberta checked in and probably took up almost all the remaining beds in the place. They had their orientation in the common area so I went to go to bed.

Still another cool, cloudy day. Where is the warm Alberta summer? I was on the road by 10 and stopped for a snack not too much later on an access road to a quary. It’s hard to find good places to stop for a break along this highway.

I got into Edson for lunch which I had at a picnic table next to the visitors center. Visitors centers seem to be a somewhat reliable place to find somewhere to sit down for a bit. I asked inside about routes into Edmonton for cyclists because I heard that the highway is very busy entering the city. Unfortunately, the girl there wasn’t very helpful but at least she gave me some street maps of Alberta and Edmonton.

I stopped a couple more times along the road in the entrances to the various range roads (All the roads off the highway are numbered “range roads”, though some also have other names). I almost stopped at the Club Nojack Resort RV Campground for $17 which includes a pool (extra charge), showers, etc, but decided to go on further to the Nojack Provincial Recreation Area that James had mentioned to me. It was a smaller self-registration site with no significant features. It was a little noisier because it was closer to the highway but it’s potentially free if they don’t check the self registration. Not to mention, it makes the ride tomorrow into Edmonton slightly shorter.

It had felt like a long day today because of the light to medium headwinds most of the way so I went to bed somewhat early.

It rained during the night yet again. There is hardly a day when there isnt some amount of rain in the evening or morning it seems. I was on the road by 9 with a good tail wind over flat ground until I hit the edge of Jasper Park.

I’m finally out of the rockies and into the Alberta foothills. This should mean there are no more big climbs for quite a while. I made it to Hinton for lunch and found a nice picnic table in front of the Tim Hortons. Before getting back on the road I picked up a small box of timbits for a snack later.

I got to Obed Lake Provincial Park by around 3 and setup in the last available site. There were only 7 so I was lucky. I was surprised to see the price was $10 at this self-registration site (lots of them around here) because the Alberta camping guide said it would only be $5. The camp site seems to be located here primarily for people who come to the lake to fish for the weekend since that is what most of the other people there were doing. I wanted to go for a swim but it was starting to get cloudy and colder again.

While sitting at the picnic table reading before cooking dinner a squirrel climbed onto one of my food panniers sitting on the picnic table. It barely moved as I shooed it away which I had to do repeatedly.

It was another cold morning and I had to have an early start to avoid being caught not paying. In the first hour or two I saw very few cars on the road, and most of them were heading south. It stayed cold for quite a while as the sun wouldn’t come out from behind a cloud until the afternoon.

At the top of one small climb there was a huge gathering of mountain goats at the side of the road (and almost as many people stopped to take pictures). I took a couple pictures and moved on so I could get to Jasper early. Before getting to Jasper I met another cyclist who came across the road to talk to me (he was out on a day trip from Jasper) and was so impressed with my trip that he wanted to take a picture of me and my bike.

By noon I was in Jasper and treated myself to a burger and an ice cream cone (it had finally gotten warm out). From there I went to the public library to use the internet where I was charged $2.50/30min. I didn’t expect a library to charge but I guess it makes sense since it is a bit of a vacation town and they don’t want everyone in there using it for free.

I stopped to get groceries before heading the 16km from the town center to the nearest campsite. After getting there, I met James in the next site over who was biking from somewhere in Ontario to Prince Rupert and then taking the ferry down the coast. We talked for a while about a number of things including biking and comp-sci as he had also just graduated (from Waterloo).

The weather is getting warmer and hopefully it will stay this way…

It had been a cold night and I stayed in my tent a little late and got on the road by 9:30. After 40 minutes I was already at Saskatchewan Crossing and stopped for a snack. Lunch was another 20km later at the Coleman Creek picnic area where a couple tour buses unloaded for lunch as well.

Next was a very hard climb up to Sunwapta Pass which is almost as high as Bow Pass yesterday. But this one was about 500m of elevation gain in 16km of road. By far the hardest climb I’ve had.

Just past the top was the border to Jasper National Park and shortly after that, the Icefield Center and the Athabasca Glacier which was very much a tourist destination. The parking lot was quite full and inside the center, just as full. I looked at a few exhibits inside and then continued on. It was a long, steep, winding, descent back down several hundred meters of elevation loss.

I continued on to Jonas creek where I discovered that they didn’t have credit card forms for self registration like the previous two campsites and I didn’t have enough cash. I had to stay here anyways (not going back up the big hill to the Icefield Center to get money) so I went up a hill into the walk in tent sites and picked one fairly out of sight so that I might not be discovered as not having paid. I almost got caught when I tried to go down to the creek to wash my dishes and put my food in a bear storage container and saw a Parks Canada person working so I went back to my site for a while.

There had been a lot of other cyclists on the road today, almost all of them heading in the other direction. I guess I wouldn’t see too many heading in the same direction as me if we ride at the same pace. One cyclist had a Canada flag flying from his bike and I wondered if he was heading across the country in the opposite direction.

I got up really late and packed slowly knowing that I had already planned a very short day of riding to the next campground. I tried to make potatoe pancakes but mixed the powder too thick and ended up with something that was more like a gooey, syrupy, semi-fried mashed potatoes (didn’t taste too bad though).

I was on the road by noon and stopped at a couple viewing spots along the way to take pictures of Crowsfoot Glacier and the top of Bow Pass, the highest elevation on my trip. I got to the campsite after 35km of riding and setup pretty early so I could go for a short hike up to the nearby Chepheren Lake (8km round trip). There are mosquitos everywhere at this campsite.