Hungry birds and an elk to a bike camp in Canmore

When you get a room at the Chateau, you might as well live it up a little while you're there. For us, that meant a wake-up call at 8am after making use of the hot tubs and the flat screens the night before.

Before leaving, we made sure to get some pictures next to Lake Louise. It's still partially frozen, but the view of the mountains in the backdrop of the blue-green glacier water is pretty surreal. When we finally get pictures up, you'll be able to see it for yourself! (We're working on it in Calgary...)

We weren't paying Chateau prices for breakfast, so we stopped a few kilometres down the road from the hotel to eat our own food at a picnic area. Granola and bananas in the cold...delicious. Apparently some birds thought so too, and decided to hang around our table. To get one away, Jon threw a pinecone, and as luck would have it, a park ranger just happened to be driving by. He wasn't too impressed, but didn't give us too hard of a time thankfully, amd we went on our way.

The 85km road to Canmore was very flat...a nice change from yesterday. As I've said, we're starting to get lucky with wildlife, and we can check 'elk' off the list today. As we were drafting, we passed by a big male with an enormous rack just grazing on the side of the highway, but somehow noone saw it until we were right close. They're not exactly animals you want to get close to, but he just ran back into the forest. Couldn't snap a picture unfortunately...he was pretty magnificent to see.

Once in Canmore, we had a place to stay at friends in town, Jennifer and Dave. They own Unlimited snowboard and skate shops in Canmore and Banff, and have young sons Keir and Tait. While we were doing some maintenance, Jen's godfather Bruce stopped by and dropped off a bottle of wine for dinner in appreciation. Fantastic!

Dave instructs for an under-9s mountain biking camp in town, and had offered to have us come up and talk to the kids after they were done. This was a really cool experience. We had the chance to talk to and answer questions from about 50 kids and their parents, and we and they alike all really enjoyed it...the kids' questions were fantastic, and we got to tell them all about what we're doing. They were really excited! Afterwards we got to take a picture with all of the kids at the camp for the local newspaper, which was great. It was really a special feeling. (We'll try and get that one up soon, too...)

After a nice dinner and a few beers at Dave and Jen's place, we're getting ready for the last stretch into Calgary tomorrow, where Global should catch us coming in to town, and hopefully some other stations as well! We'll also be on Q107 Friday morning with Terry Dimonte, a man I grew up with listening to the radio in Montreal. They'll be on location at the Deerfoot Inn and Casino, so hopefully there will be a lot of people and we get some good airtime! We'll kep everyone posted.

PS: The guys would like everyone to know that I accidentally took someone else's 4L of milk when we were in the grocery store in Golden. It was sitting right there, and I just figured it was ours. Mea culpa.
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