Day 3 Monday July 30, 2001: A Day of Rest

Well, to each his own. I started the day by sleeping in until 6:30 AM. The night before, I'd called around and found a swimming pool, at the Sally Borden Recreation Center. I thought we'd passed a rec. center on the way into town the day before, so I biked back there with my suit and stuff in my backpack. Nothing there but hockey players, who had no clue where the pool was. Back to the phone book, found it was quite close to our camp, so back up the hill I went. I got in a good 1.5 mile swim, came back to camp for lunch, slept, then got up for a 60 minute run. Sure beats biking, sometimes.

By 5 PM, the sun was actually shining down on Banff, so I biked back into town for a look-see. What I saw astounded me. The place is surrounded by mountains, being at the confluence of two river valleys. It seem like everywhere you look, there's another peak staring back. And, right outside of town, Mt. Norquay, a pretty fair ski area. Banff is a full service city - I even found a battery for my watch, so I could now check my altitude, as well as my attitude, on a regular basis.

Dinner at Magpie and stumps proved a narrow affair - we holed up along the bar, taking up the entire L-shaped table, plus another one off to the side. Took three pictures to get us all in.

Now, apparently the night before, the carousers had stopped on the bridge, from which I took the picture at the top of this page, and spied a drowned bike in the Bow river. They tried to raise it, but only moved it from one rock bar to another. This evening, Fred stopped by a hardware store, and got some real tools, intending to ressurect the old thing. All we got were a lot of crazy stares from those walking and driving by us. If we had pulled it out, there would have been no room for it back at camp, where our chairs took up every available square inch of gravel space. Back on the bus to camp, and so to bed.

On to Lake Louise!