Wednesday, June 1, 2022 - We drove for seven hours today to travel from Kalispell, Montana to Cochrane, Alberta, Canada. Cochrane is about 30 miles west of Calgary towards Lake Louise and Banff. The day was absolutely gorgeous with temps in the mid-60s and white, puffy clouds scattered about. The snow on the peaks near Glacier NP and on the Canadian Rockies was magnificent. We crossed into Canada at the Carway entry point just east of Glacier NP without any difficulties at all. Lisa had done the work of aligning our entry location, Covid info, and shot history to our passports, so when they scanned our passports, all the info that they needed was available to them. They just passed us in. It took about 15 minutes to get through and that included 10 minutes waiting for those people in front of us. The lady was very nice and friendly. The mountains in the area were magnificent with snow on top. There was no wind at all to deal with.

NOTE: Super-fast Wifi here. Twenty-five mega-bytes per second up and down. That will get the job done!! We are parked right under the WiFi transmitter; pretty cool.

We stopped in Fort McCleod for a picnic lunch. We found picnic tables right next to the historic Fort McCleod. It was a lot of fun. We then drove to Calgary and around the west side to head for Cochrane. One thing that became abundantly clear was that there are miles and miles of homes and condominiums all over the place on the west side of town. I don't know where all the people have come from, but they are all close to the city. Get away from town and there is nothing but open land. We even followed the GPS to get to our RV park and it lead us through several residential areas with schools and about eight traffic rotaries. Needless to say, there is a better way, but sometimes you don't discover it until you have been at a place for a while. At least, we did not get "boxed in." We also found out that sunset is at 9:45pm in the Calgary area. The days are getting longer!

Thursday, June 2, 2022 - We decided to take a bicycle ride into Calgary on this day. There is a trail that extends from about 15 miles west of Calgary into the town. We met some very nice people, Paul and Karen, and they gave us some great advice on where to start our ride and what to do in the area. They suggested that we start at a park called Bowness Park in the Bowness district of Calgary. The trail was pretty well marked, but it ended up on some residential roads and side streets. We were able to navigate it pretty well and after about five miles, we were on an actual bike path into the city. The path was mostly set aside for biking with a separate path for walkers. It was a beautiful day and the skyline of Calgary is pretty impressive. We biked over the Peace Bridge across the Bow River and then rode all around on Prince Island. Prince Island has lots of pretty flower gardens that are just now beginning to bloom. After exploring the river area of Calgary, we decided to head back to Bowness. On the way, we stopped at a quaint little cafe, Angel's Cafe, right on the rivers edge. We had a very nice little breakfast there while looking at the river, passers by, and listening to a man doing an excellent job of playing a slide guitar along the sidewalk. It was very soothing music and made the breakfast very relaxing. Sitting next to us were two gentlemen whom we talked to a little. One of the gentlemen is a bike rider and had his bike on the rack right in front of us. We started a conversation and it turns out that his name is John Cole and he is originally from Great Britain, but has been in Calgary since the 1980s (after spending 20 years in Saudi Arabia). He is a petroleum geologist who is currently retired from the fuels industry. He asked if he could ride with us and we immediately said yes, since he could easily help us navigate the return trip and John is a great guy to ride with. He guided us all the way back to our truck and then asked if we would like to go farther. We said, "Yes." He then took us on a ten mile guided tour of a whole host of trails in the west Calgary area. We went through culverts, over bridges, and, at times, onto some safe, unpaved surfaces. It was a magnificent ride with some great views of the area including the ski jump site for the Calgary Olympics. John then rode all the way back to our truck with us before scurrying off to his home to mow his lawn. It is really a shame that we are just passing through as it would be great to spend more time with John and also to meet his wife. After our ride, we found the nearest Dairy Queen for soft serve ice cream before driving to the Bowness Bike Shop to have an issue with my bike checked and buy some protein food and a new bicycle lock that John recommend. We then headed back to our RV in Cochrane for some rest. John also gave us some great info on local bicycle rides. One such ride is on a trail that extends from Canmore to Banff and then on to Lake Louise. As it turns out, the part of the trail on the Bow River Parkway from Banff to about half way to Lake Louise (15 miles) is on a fantastic road that is closed to vehicles for a month in the spring and a month in the fall. It is open to only walkers and cyclists. We decided to give that trail a try tomorrow: Friday.

Friday, June 3, 2022 - We got up, ate, and were on the road by about 9:00 am for the Bow River Parkway Trail just beyond Banff, Alberta, Canada. On the way through Banff, we missed the offramp that we should have taken. We ended up driving about eight miles beyond our ride start before we determined that we were lost. We doubled back to Banff and found a small picnic area to park our car just off the highway and next to the trial. From Banff, we rode on a road along the freeway for about two miles and then hit a bike path for about another two miles until we reached the Bow River Parkway that is closed to vehicles. A magnificent road with wide shoulders and extremely smooth for the full distance of the road. This is a road that could be very easily ridden even with traffic on the road too. The shoulder is super-wide and the traffic drives at about 30 mph on this road. The scenery is awesome and the mountains are quite majestic; it is a gem of a ride. We carried bear spray, but with the large numbers of cyclists on the road, it was highly unlikely that we would need it. We were told to watch for animals along the road and to be careful. We saw some deer and then we came upon two bighorn sheep that were grazing along the road. It was on a downhill, so I was going pretty fast. I did not see them until I was pretty close and they decided to run across the road directly in front of me. It was very close to a collision. I hit my brakes pretty hard (almost locked up the tires) and came within about five feet of hitting one. I also had another rider pretty close behind me. That was quite an exciting experience. We actually saw these two again on the trip back to Banff and I got some great photos and video of them. Be sure to check out the photo gallery and video of this ride to see these bighorn sheep. We then saw several deer along the road too, but they stayed way away from us. We continued our ride all the way to a place called Johnston Canyon; abut 15 miles into the ride. We stopped there for a muffin and a diet coke. This is a popular hiking trailhead and we may stop here later to take this hike. We also noticed the astounding number of E-Bikes and senior citizens at this stop. There is a snack shop/restaurant here and is is a great turn-around point for many riders. E-Bikes are making these wonderful experiences available to many senior citizens; the hills are much easier on an E-Bike. On the way to Johnston Canyon there is one small section that had two climbs that were steep. One registered 17% on my Garmin while the other displayed 14%. That is quite a climb and, luckily, they were not too long. I was puffing along in my best (easiest) gear and Lisa sails buy me on her E-Bike. She got about a100 yards ahead of me and I hear her singing (we have Sena helmets that have walkie-talkie communication out to about a half mile). I'm thinking that this is not right; I'm suffering and she is singing. It turns out that she was just letting the bears in the area know that she was there. She has a phobia about bears, and I had the bear spray. After our snack at Johnstone Canyon, we decided to continue for another five miles on the parkway. This section would be open to traffic, but it was not a problem at all. Wide shoulders, reasonably slow car speeds, and very courteous drivers. We continued on to Castle Mountain where I took several photos of the majestic Castle Mountain. There began to be a slight chance of rain, so we began the return trip to Banff. It was a very nice ride for the additional 20 miles back to Banff. Once we arrived back at our starting point, we decided to have our picnic lunch right there. While we were eating, Lisa said, "Hey. Look at that goat." I turned around and saw this brown "fuzzball" of a bear grazing in the bushes about 100 feet away from us. I said, "Lisa, that is a bear." She immediately decided that our picnic was terminated. As it turns out, it was a small bear with a collar on it. It had obviously been captured by the park service and tagged. It was grazing and showed no interest in us. I have some photos of it for the blog. We then drove into Banff and then up to the Tunnel Mountain RV Park that is part of the Banff National Park. This is were we will be staying on Sunday, so we wanted to see the best way to get there. It turned out to be pretty easy to get there and easy to get to our parking spot. We will be there on Sunday for two days. We then drove back to our RV to relax.

Saturday, June 4, 2022 - We decide to take a more relaxing day around the RV and the Cochrane area. We drove into Cochrane to look around. First we went to Walmart to stock up for the next leg of our journey to Banff. We then went to the bank to get some Canadian money. We have been using our USAA credit card for all our purchases since we do not get any foreign transaction fees, but we know that we will need some Canadian money along the way somewhere. We also got some "Loonies" or Canadian dollar coins. Then we went to "old town" Cochrane to look around. We walked all around town and then decided to head back to the RV. On the way, we decided that we would need some diesel, so we used the Gas Buddy application to find the cheapest fuel around. The cost was $1.75 per liter for diesel. To determine how many gallons you are buying, you have to divide the number of liters by a factor of 3.8 to get the number of gallons. For example; if you buy 400 liters of fuel and divide by 3.8, you just bought 105.2 gallons of diesel. On this particular trip, I did not concern myself about the number of liters, I simply put in $600 worth of diesel (three re-starts at the pump of $200 each for $600 total). Now, in this case, this is the cost at the pump in Canadian dollars. The Canadian dollar has an exchange rate of 1.26 Canadian dollars to one U.S. dollar. So, again, I have to convert $600 Canadian dollars to U.S. dollars since this what the credit cart company will charge me. I now use a factor of .79. I multiply the $600 total by .79 and find that my bank in the U.S. will charge me $474 dollars for the diesel. When we started out on this trip, I thought that diesel would be costing me about $6.50 per gallon, but it turns our with the exchange rate, the gallon of diesel cost me $5.14. If you have able to follow all of these financial gyrations, more power to you. If not, go back and review the text a little slower. You can even call me directly and I will go over it with you. LOL

NOTE: The people here are very friendly and not in a big hurry. They are very courteous and polite and have no problem taking time to talk to you; that includes the younger people. It is really refreshing. Also, there is a bike and walking path right next to the RV park and many of the dogs are not on leashes. Not one dog, and there are a lot of them, has barked at us, chased us, or acted in an aggressive manner. Even the dogs here are polite. A very pleasant place to visit.