Lake Louise Rest day

   When we got to Lake Louise, we found a small camp ground to stay in. There was no workers when we arrived, so we just found an open spot with no campers and we set up for the night. Downey and myself set up our small bivy bags and our friend Emanuel put his luxuriously huge tent up. The night was a bitter sweet thing. We had made it threw what had been the hardest mountain passes to date, yet there was no celebration of any sort. Even if there would have been, I doubt any of us had the energy to really enjoy anything. There was an attempt to get a fire going, but the rain quickly put an end to that. Eventually, with my energy being drained, I forgot about any attempt to celebrate and squeezed myself into my bivy for some sleep.
   I woke up to water hitting my face. Not sure as to where I was, it took me a considerable amount of time to figure out that the rain had increased and that my water resistant bivy had once again let me down. Now, not only did I have a very limited amount of room to sleep in, but I was also wet. Regardless of my predicament at the time, pure exhaustion took over once again and I slept, wet or not.
    Our alarm clocks had flown into town with us and didn't waste an opertunity to wake us up. At around 6 am the crows from the surrounding hills found our small group and screamed till we struggled out of our sleeping sacs. It seemed like Emanuel had had a wonderful night of sleep, as he was bone dry when he emerged from his tent. I had been dampened a little, and some parts of my sleeping bag were downright wet, but Downey faired alot worse. When he emerged from his bivy, he was complaining vehemently about the manufactures of his bivy claiming they had not waterproofed his bag at all. At first it was hard to believe him, as I have found Downey to complain alot, but once he removed his drenched sleeping bag and matress I was suprised he didn't drown during the night. Downey also pointed out to me that on the inside of the bivy we both have, there was a safety guide that tells you very clearly "suffucation is always possible". There went all possibilities of a nice relaxed sleep in the future within the bivy, apparently it was just as risky as going to be with a garbage bag around your head, just less waterproof.
   Everyone in our trio made use of the on site showers, and it was a good thing. We were only planning to spend one day in Lake Louise, but we didn't want to be asked to move along due to our offensive smell. The town of Lake Louise was much smaller than what I had imagined. The center of town was a large parking lot surrounded by all kind of touristy shops and cool trendy coffee shops. There were no houses in site. Apparently the transiant workers who make the town run are put in living quarters out of the view of most of the people.
   The first order of business in town was to fix our bikes. Downey, Emanuel and I found a bikeshop and chit chatted with the workers there. When we mentioned where we had been and what we were doing, there was quite a few number of heads turned our way. It had dawned on me that people were finaly taking notice that we were in one of the harder parts of the cross Canada trek. It seemed like the workers of the shop new that the next few days going up the jasper would be a proving ground as to wether we would make it across Canada or crash and burn in a heep of exhaustion and frustration at the beautiful mountains that surrounded us.
    With our bikes being looked after we then needed to worry about laundry. There was a very nice hotel in town that allowed us not only to do our laundry, but also to use their pool, sauna and hot tub. It was our day off, and a hot tub and sauna was exactly what my sore muscles needed at the time.
   During our day of walking around town, we were invited by a couple of the local workers to join them for a party. It was very nice to enjoy an evening with the locals. It made me think that we were on the Titanic and we had somehow been invited to the party in the 3rd class bottom part of the ship where Jack Dawson and his friends go, as opposed to the more expensive but less entertaining party that Kate and her fiance are usually a part of (I just saw the movie Titanic so please... do not judge). When we finally went to bed, it was a little later than we had expected.