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Day 12 – The Golden Adventure Continues

Day 12 – The Golden Adventure Continues

Jay and I went for a quick brunch over at Whitetooth Mountain Bistro. They had THE best breakfast potatoes. Seriously.
Afterward, we met back up with Andy and Miranda to head out for another quick ride. We rode a loop, starting with a nice mellow climb up CSB then down Mighty Quinn; a machine-built, fast, fun downhill trail.  It was just nice to be able to bike directly from town to the trailhead. (Something Jay and I really admire about certain towns)
Later on that evening, we all planned to make dinner together so Jay and I walked a few blocks to one of the local grocery stores. On the way back to Andy’s we happened upon at a little outdoor gym… so we decided to work out  goof off for a bit. Gotta stay fit on the road!
For dinner, we made a kale salad with fresh greens from Andy’s roommate’s garden (with her blessing of course). Andy made some yummy ribs + veggies on the grill. To top it off, Miranda made a cherry pie that was to die for.  We felt pretty spoiled.
Our stay in Golden has been pretty magical and we were grateful to have Andy and Miranda as hosts, but tomorrow we must move on from this place and onward to our next destination, Fernie.
Day 11 – The beautiful and friendly town of Golden – British Columbia

Day 11 – The beautiful and friendly town of Golden – British Columbia

We’re lucky enough to have a group of amazing friends back east. Our one friend Amy introduced us to her brother, Andy, and his girlfriend, Miranda, a few weeks back when they were visiting Ithaca. They mentioned if happened to wander out to Golden to touch base, and so we did!
We rolled in Golden later than expected. Jay and I didn’t anticipate such a gnarly, curvy, steep mountain pass once we crossed the continental divide.  Andy lives on the end of a quiet, dead end street in town. Perfect spot for a giant shiny Airstream to park.
The locals are nice, they love being there.  Andy works for Golden Tourism, but despite the fact that he sells the town for a living, you can tell he loves living and working Golden. He’s very proud of the town and after being here we definitely could see why.
Our first morning, Andy and Miranda made us a delicious breakfast and gave us a tour of one of the mountain bike trail systems closest to Cedar Lake. The forest there is beautiful.
I’m a big fan of smells. And I’m telling you… this trail smelled good. Tall pines and undulating singletrack make for some really fun, fast and flowy cross country trails. We covered around 5-6 miles with ease.
After our quick warm up loop, we shuttled up a pretty wicked dirt road to the top of Little Sir Donald (LSD). Having experienced the trail ratings in Moose Mt., I knew that this black diamond trail would be no joke either.
Boy was this trail gnarly and technical. LSD starts pretty mellow and then quickly turns into a fast descent complete with wooden features, loose corners, and steep rooty areas with 3-4ft drops in some sections. The trail was conveniently marked with arrows and warning signs along the way for the Enduro race happening the next day. I was very thankful for the signage.
After LSD you pop out on the Canyon Trail with amazing views. We had to be extra careful around some corners because of complete DROP OFFs in some spots.
After the ride we drank some beer and went for a quick dip in Cedar Lake while Andy + Miranda went to grab the shuttle vehicle.
Back at Andy’s place we took the dogs for a walk on the trails adjacent to his place. They had been recently damaged from high winds and micro bursts the ripped through the area a few days before (scary stuff). Entire trees had been uprooted and strewn across the trail.
After our adventure hike up and over many down trees, we biked through town on the bike path over to Whitetooth Brewing and ordered a pizza from Red Tomato Pie. Nothing like ending a great day with good company, pizza and beer!
 
Day 10 – Banff + Laundry Day

Day 10 – Banff + Laundry Day

Today we’ll be saying goodbye to Canmore and headed through Banff National Park and over to Golden where we’ll be boondocking outside our friend Amy’s brother’s house.
Up until now, I haven’t mentioned a whole lot about the town of Canmore.
Compared to Banff, it’s a less touristy (but still touristy) town. Canmore sits right before Banff National Park and is only about an hour or so out of Calgary. So it’s a doable weekend trip for Calgarians (<—— I may have just made up this word).
Canmore is a really cute little town, expensive, but cute. There’s plenty to do and to see. Just the simple fact that they have a Sotheby’s is telling.
On our way to Golden, we stopped in Banff to do laundry and run some errands… or maybe just to pose with their cool sign…
 
Doing laundry in a busy town might not sound like a great idea and in fact, it wasn’t. But we made it work. We had to park our RV about a 15-minute walk from the downtown and carry roughly 3 loads worth of stinky laundry through Banff’s busy streets while walking Cooper in the heat of the afternoon.
 
The good news is, we managed to finish all 3 loads of laundry, do a quick grocery run, see the town a bit and get back on the road in just a couple of hours. Next stop – GOLDEN!
Day 9 – Ha Ling Peak and Floating in Canmore

Day 9 – Ha Ling Peak and Floating in Canmore

Ha Ling is a very distinguishable peak from the town of Canmore. As soon as we arrived in town I could tell Jay was thinking, “I want to climb that thing”.
In the morning, we fueled up with some yummy breakfast tacos and drove into town to find someone who might know a little more about the trail.
The guy at the Bike Cafe in Canmore described Ha Ling as the “Stairmaster to Hell”. What an awesome description right?
Now having done the hike, he couldn’t have been more spot on. He also mentioned that he hiked to the top with his 2 old, overweight, furry dogs in about 4.5 hours (give or take a few breaks). 4.5 hours of Stairmaster hell isn’t that bad, lol.
The drive up to the trailhead was a rather loose and dusty. On the way up, we passed a few pristine turquoise rivers and lakes along the way with some great views of Bow Valley.
The trailhead looks just as we pictured it. Rooty and steep! #letthefunbegin
The Ha Ling trail meanders through the pines for the first 3/4 of the way up featuring beautiful lookouts along the way.
This trail, for being on the difficult side, is quite busy. We ran into many other hikers along the way.
When we exited the forest there was a steep, dusty and loose scramble up to the top. I thought it was rather rugged but there were people in beat up Nikes hauling ass, so really anyone with enough stamina can make it up this trail. Here’s Jay in the shoulder area before we kept heading up to the peak (which is not visible in this photo since the peak is to the left).
Here I am on the peak with Cooper. Notice how I’m a good 5 ft from the edge? It was a straight vertical drop on the other side!  Jay knows exposure isn’t my favorite thing, but the views made this hike totally worth it.
After spending some time at the peak it was now time to descend. Hiking poles would have come in handy considering our knees weren’t so happy by the end.
This hike took us about 4 hours from start to finish.
Once we got back to the truck we headed back to Canmore to meet up with Danielle and Bill. They were treating us to a FLOAT as a wedding gift.  No, not a river float trip but a FLOAT experience.
Okay, let me explain. Basically, you float, naked, in a giant pod filled with 10″ of water that has about 800 lbs of Epsom salts dissolved into it. Pretty awesome.  I hadn’t heard of anything like this before either… but after the Stairmaster to Hell I could use as much floating as I could get. Here’s one of the float pods.
All in all, the hour of floating was super relaxing. I didn’t fall asleep, which apparently happens for some folks and is completely safe to do so. Danielle and I, on the other hand, did a similar thing where we’d touch the edge of the pod and start counting how long it’d take to float to the other side.
Day 8 – Mountain Biking at Moose Mountain in Alberta

Day 8 – Mountain Biking at Moose Mountain in Alberta

After our long wedding day adventure, we decided we’d sleep in the next day ( of course ).
I made pancakes and we sipped on some coffee. Lounged around in the hammock and got ready for our first day of riding in Canada. As you can see we brought a little bit of the east coast with us on this trip (ie. vermont maple syrup and our Gimme coffee mugs).
We knew we wanted to get a ride in – but not quite sure where. We read about Moose Mt. on the Trail Forks app. It’s about an hour from the campground back towards Calgary near the town of Bragg Creek. After reading some trail reviews we decided to check it out.
Pneuma was the trail we decided to climb in order to get to some of the fun stuff up top. Not a bad climb. Steep and rooty in sections and gets rockier as you get closer to the top. We saw some smoke in the distance. After running into another rider who had mentioned there were forest fires in the next mountain range over. Scary stuff.
Once we finished the climb we noticed a sign that listed a few trail closures due to maintenance. Of , ourse all of the trails we wanted to ride (ie. Shaft) was on the “no go” list. BUTTTT….we decided to ride it anyway, figuring we may be able to go around the maintenance area. When in Rome right?
Man, was it fun. Bermy, fast FUN.  Cooper seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.
THEN we heard voices further down the trail. UH OH. Caught red-handed going down a trail we shouldn’t be.
So we turned back and hiked our bikes straight back up the trail. Probably the WORST hike-a-bike I’ve ever experienced. It took us about 45 minutes to get to the top. The best part was as we approached the top, some other dude came ripping down the trail. We should have just asked for forgiveness rather than climbing all the way back up. But that’s the price you pay for breaking the rules! Lesson-learned.
We headed back down Pneuma and turned onto a super fun, flowy, jumpy, machine-built trail called 7-47. Definitely worth it though we noticed Cooper was getting pretty tired so decided to call it a day. When we had arrived, the parking lot had  1-2 other vehicles but upon returning it was now filled with at least 20!  We spoke to a few locals who mentioned you’ll find a lot of people from Calgary ride here after work and on weekends since it’s only 30 minutes away.
Overall Moose Mt. is a neat little trail system that we’d love to explore some more one day. The nearest town, Bragg Creek, looked really cute as well. Though not many things are open during the week. We did, however, find a nice little family restaurant called, Bragg’s Corner Kitchen, for food/drinks before heading back towards Canmore.