Calgary – Day 5

It was 9° when we were leaving this morning, so I had my vest on the bed to take. When I went into the room to put it into my backpack I found Cat making himself at home.

We thought we were in time to get the bus that would get us to Outlaw Sports for their opening, but it came a few minutes early so we had to wait 20 minutes.

Here we are ready to go.

Patti needed to make a minor adjustment to the seat on the medium size bike that she’s using today, but found it to be much better than the small one she has been riding. Her height is right on the edge of the range for the two bikes.

Today we were riding the section of the Bow River, where it turns and runs north south. The closest access point was about 4 km from the store.

The path ran next to a highway for a few kilometres when we joined it which made it a bit noisy, despite the separation, but it soon turned away from the highway towards the river.

We then passed through Sue Higgins Park3, which had the largest offleash area that I have ever seen. It was 1.6 km long. There were many places along the path where you could enter the least free area, and they had little roundabouts to reduce contention between cyclists and people going in and out of the leash free park.

We then climbed on a switchback trail up to the ridge over the river. It gave us a beautiful view of downtown Calgary in the distance.

As we descended, we had a stunning view of the river and the active transportation bridge we would use to cross to the other side before heading back north. Despite the fact that it looks like we are in the wilderness here there was a subdivision right behind me.

A little further north, we came to another bridge and saw several boats with people fishing, and people using the beach. There was a gazebo with a bike stand where we stopped to have a snack before continuing.

It felt like we were in the wilderness but immediately, after leaving the gazebo, it became apparent that we were right next to a subdivision.

The path was blocked by a fallen tree from the storm a couple days ago and a little bit further on there was a cave-in with a diameter of a 40 cm in the path. Fortunately, someone had stuck a dead branch in it, so we were already steering to the other side of the path to avoid the branch when we realize there was a cave-in.

We climbed up another steep hill onto the ridge on the east side of the river to enjoy more spectacular views, and to see downtown Calgary in the distance.

As part of the reconciliation process, Calgary is acknowledging that it has been built on Treaty Seven indigenous lands. We have seen these acknowledgment signs in several places along the path.

We had to cross the Western Headworks canal on the Deerfoot Trail. The word trail here seems to be used to describe highways or busy arterial roads. There were ramps from the path and a protected crossing over the canal on the Deerfoot Trail, and then we were riding along the canal that we avoided a couple days ago.

The employee at Outlaw Sports was correct that it wasn’t as pleasant as the main trails along the Bow River in terms of scenery, and the surface of the path was not as well-maintained. It is a train I wouldn’t mind riding in it’s entirety, but I’m glad I wasn’t doing so on Friday, which was hot and humid.

There was an incredibly low underpass a little further along under the Deerfoot Trail. I’m actually surprised that it was deemed sufficient to be open to the public with simply a warning to watch your head and dismount.

This part of the Canal Pathway is quite noisy, being right next to the busy Road.

And when we reach the point where we turned around at the eastern end of our ride, yesterday, we turned east crossing the Deerfoot Trail, again on a protected crossing, and then started back down the west side of the Bow river. It was such a clear day today, that from the top of the crossing, we could see the mountains on the horizon in the distance.

We used Google maps to locate somewhere to eat for lunch and found that a café called Good News nearby. We had to leave the trail, but had a bike lane, even through an underpass, that took us all the way there.

The food was good, and it had a pleasant patio to sit on.

Where the pathway was adjacent to a golf course, they had a very high fence with the top curving outward to protect path users from errant golf balls.

From there it wasn’t much further to Heritage Road where we had started this morning. It was a long steep climb from the river, and we had seen cyclists walking their bikes up the hill when we went down this morning, but we both made it up without stopping, or walking our bikes. We rode back past the bike store over to Heritage Park to have another barn floor ice cream at Harvey’s Confectionery.

We then returned the bikes to the store and got the bus back to the apartment. It was absolutely perfect for Cycling today. Sunny, no humidity and the temperature in the high teens.

Just as we got off the bus, it started raining. We made it inside and it rained quite heavily for a while. We relaxed for a bit, and then went to the grocery store to buy a few more groceries, and something for dinner.

Tomorrow will probably be our final day of cycling. Then we will spend some time exploring the downtown area on foot.

I’ll leave tonight’s post with a picture from our evening walk,