Day 3: Maligne Canyon

This is Mike writing on the blog for the first time on our Canadian Rockies adventure. Today we biked about 8 miles to see Maligne Canyon in Jasper National Park.  Once at the trailhead, we ditched the bikes and began following the trail along the Athabasca River.  Erin snuck in a shot of me doing so in the above photo. 

As we progressed along the hike, the river's work in carving out the canyon (including several waterfalls) became evident...or so I thought until Erin asked me at our break stop, "Was that the canyon?" :)  We shared a laugh about that before enjoying a hot beverage at the mis-named "Tea House" at Maligne Lodge. It had started to drizzle during the latter part of our hike in, so I was really psyched for our arrival at a place dedicated to serving my favorite hot beverage. However, the "Tea House" was simply the misnomer that the lodge had given their cafeteria; they had a few standard varieties of bagged tea, but seriously, my tea stash at home deserved the "Tea House" title about a hundred times more so than here. Still, hot tea did hit the spot, and Erin enjoyed joking about my Tea House in Hyattsville. 

Rather than take the busier trail along the Canyon back to our bikes, we opted for a more elevated path thru the woods that ended up being mostly ours to enjoy. That was nice, but the lack of people around meant that we needed to keep a constant chatter going -- we were in bear territory and neither of us wanted to surprise one. At some point, I began singing "Mr. Wendal" by Arrested Development and "Take it Easy" by the Eagles MUCH too Erin's amusement; I am not a singer, but bear country will cause me to be belt out a few notes. Thankfully, the picture below is just that and not a video recording. 

About a half mile away from our bikes, the rain returned. About 100 yards away, it began to pour, so we sprinted for the nearest shelter...a port-a-potty toilet at the trailhead. Fortunately, it was reasonably nice by port-a-potty standards, but we did spend 20 minutes there waiting for the rain to subside. Below, I'm peering out to see if the rain has stopped. 

We had wet seats on the ride home, but the sun came out, some hot Neapolitan pizza was had, and then we saw the below elk on the way home. Oh, and the hot tub once we were back at our place!