Now THERE'S a Big Grin!

Short Version:
Clean clothes, clean us, full bellies, beer. A ride with an accidental walk in the middle and a flying finish.

Long Version:
It's got to the point where it's a bit of a shock to the system to actually pay for a campsite, but the way Jasper town and Park are organised made it pretty much unavoidable. Not cheap at $27.40, but that included showers, flush toilets, and firewood*, and it brought our camping fee total for the BC leg of our journey to... $27.40, which averages out to not very much over the three weeks we've been on the road so far. We charmed the gatekeeper lady (mainly by not being German) into giving us a really nice site, and then abandoned it immediately in favor of laundry, internet, delicious foods, and beer**.

We were up early(ish) next morning to get one last ride in before 11am checkout. Twenty minutes on roadside trails took us to the trailhead near the old bridge, and then we were into the forest, past the woman with the corgi***, and riding pretty fast along a trail which gave us enough rocky, rooty bits to keep us interested, but was open and flowing enough that we had big grins on our faces for most of the hour it took us to get to the top of the drop into the Valley of the Five Lakes. Breaking yet another spoke on the way down dented my grin somewhat, but the lakes**** were beautiful, the sun was peeping out from behind the clouds, and the trail was well-formed, so the smiles were still there when we reached the near end of the last lake fifteen minutes later. They slipped a bit over the next half-hour though, as we hiked our bikes around the far end of the lake on the "Bikes not recommended" section of trail: up and down small cliffs; over too many fallen trees to count; across marshy bits that couldn't decide if they were land or lake. It was a different kind of fun. Apart from the bit where Nene carnaged her shin on her pedal while clambering over a downed tree. That wasn't much fun at all.

Between the hour we lost when we crossed into the Mountain Time Zone and the half-hour that disappeared as we went round the end lake, we were running late, so we put the hammer down once we made it back onto rideable trail. The last 10km was much like the first chunk we'd ridden (it actually used a couple of bits of the same trail), only more fun at the speeds we were hitting. Rocks, roots, marsh, a frog - all passed under our wheels without slowing our progress appreciably, and we arrived back at the trailhead in under an hour, and both feeling fantastic. The ride back to the campground was likewise done at pace, with the only real halt at the point where a dog that looked like a tiny husky with a full-sized attitude decided it didn't like Nene.

We were forty-five minutes late for checkout when we arrived back, so we vacated our site... and went and had more showers before actually leaving.







* = Our camp-neighbor stole it while we were out.

** = The Blueberry-Vanilla Ale was the hit of the evening. Janine's Applewood-Smoked Bacon Cheeseburger was a better pick than my Elk and Bisonburger.

*** = Both of us spoke to the corgi, and both times the woman thought she was the one being addressed. Which is kind of weird, given that Nene said "Hey cutie," and I said "Now THERE'S a big grin!"

**** = Let no Canadian ever dish out grief to NZers about the lack of imagination displayed in the naming of the two main islands. Calling lakes as pretty as these ones 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 is WAY worse.