​My knee is flaming.  I wake up and realize just how good a call it was to make in deciding to end our ride.  Any more pushing past today would cause some serious damage to my already inflamed patellar tendonitis; Janna is in the same boat about her Achilles.  We break camp after sleeping in, making our way to the Trailhead Café in Lake Louise, and then jump on the Bow Valley Parkway once more to head east across the Rockies to Canmore, Alberta where a hotel and a U-Haul are waiting for us.

​I awoke with my patellar tendon absolutely gushing that deep pain all too familiar to me and indicative of sustained patellar tendonitis.  Janna awoke barely able to walk from the searing Achilles pain making itself known.  Today was planned to be short.  It also coincided with Canada Day (which had a feel similar to me of the Fourth of July in America).  The roads would be packed, the campgrounds even more-so, but luckily we had reserved a tent site ahead of time at Lake Louise Campground.  Unlike many parks in the USA, the parks in Canada did not save sites for those arriving by foot/pedal, precipitating the need to reserve everything ahead of time.  In fact, we saw some cyclists along the route going the opposite direction who daily seemed stressed about trying to find camping accommodations each night due to their lack of reservations.

We slept in late to relish a shorter day today.  In fact, after rousing, we rode down to Radium Hot Springs.  Some people passing through the campground the night before informed us that there was no good food nor resupply worthy.  They were absolutely wrong.  We went to the Bighorn Café in town where I ordered a breakfast veggie potpie and a vegan curry pasty.  Janna got her own fixings which we sat back and enjoyed on a sunny morning.  Food consumed, we headed north of town towards the official entrance to Kootenay National Park.  Our goal for the day was to bike across most of the park and stay at a primitive frontcountry campground.

Bounded awake by another day of long riding, thunderclaps, squalls, and flashes of lightning lit up the morning dawn.  We crawled out of the Eolus into resounding pitter as rain gashed the still air.  Janna and I quickly packed up and jumped out onto the Kootenay-Columbia Highway that would serve as main conduit across the river-valleys today.  Thick rain mats carpeted mountainsides above verdant grass meadows strewn with ponderosas in this terrain of rain shadow (but raining nonetheless).  

​Morning crept on so we awoke to cover a long day's riding.  Back out onto the heavily trafficked-highway, we veered left and downhill through the gaps and passes of the smaller Rockies before turning onto some backroads.  The quiet ponderosas close in around us in this arid part - the nostalgia for AZ is great.  Verdant grass sways with purple lupine.  All so lush with so much winter precipitation.

​As a proper Zero Day entails, Janna and I sleep late into the morning.  Eventually roused by light, we ride our bikes lazily around Fernie to enjoy downtown and eat quantities of food earned by miles.  But, most shockingly, we hear news from Canadians that Roe v. Wade has been overturned in America by the Supreme Court.  Shocked, quite understated.

​We have a hotel booked in Fernie tonight and a planned zero day for tomorrow - a bed is calling after days of cold and rain so we awake early and head out on the highway.  After riding across plains and headwinds, it feels monumental to be entering back into the black hulks and green draperies of the northern Rocky Mountains.  Large gray boulders and the sheen of decades-old rockslides grinding faces of peaks dab our peripherals.  The shoulder is good and we make time across slung-valleys sharply green.

​After a day of long riding in wet and frigid conditions, Janna and I took advantage of what was predicted to be a sunny day to sleep in and commence riding only when rested and warm.  The Sun rose early, but we didn't rise until 9:30.  Even then, we walked around the area, ate lunch on a bench next to the calm lapping waters of Upper Waterton Lake, and walked along rushing Cameron Creek.  We departed at 11:30 am.

​The evening before while in St. Mary, Janna and I had received two critical pieces of information pertaining to this day to come.  1) The original border crossing to Waterton Lakes was closed indefinitely.  2) A massive early summer snow storm was coming to bear upon the area starting tomorrow.  The storm would whip winds, with directionality heralding form the north, northwest - our exact direction of travel.  We should expect 40 mph headwinds with 60 mph gusts, plummeting temperatures with highs in the low 30s, torrential rain, and snow dropping several inches at our destination.

​The soft grass of the open meadows of the campground led to a unstirring rest.  The sun rose early, but we didn't get up until nearly 7 am.  We took our time to pack up, enjoy the large wind-blocking pavilion, charge our electronics, and double-check our new itinerary was feasible along the highways of East Glacier.  There didn't seem to be too much beta surrounding road-riding this area, but we knew it provided the only sure access to St. Mary with the given blockage of snow up on the pass of Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Three days prior to the start of this trip, I casually turned on the news to check the conditions of Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park.  I was shocked to find that in late June a blizzard had descended only days before to dump nearly 2 feet of snow that were proceeded by subsequent avalanches burying our route under snow so deep that the road wouldn't open until late July.  With a string of camping reservations carefully made months prior across the Canadian Parks system (there are no hiker/biker sites in Canada), we had a strict schedule to keep to meet our nightly camp spots.  With Going to the Sun Road submerged under Arctic conditions, I jumped immediately onto Gaia GPS and began scouting out a southerly route that still passed through Glacier National Park but guaranteed to meet our original route on the other side of the great range.  Not only that, I learned that our original Border Crossing site was now closed indefinitely.  I spent hours determining a route that would take us through Glacier, north to an open Border Patrol Station, and then spit us westward towards Waterton Lakes National Park.