Day 40, Jasper Canada

After three days of rain,...

...we finally had a clear day and were all looking forward to getting clean.  We pulled our bikes over beside a river in Jasper National Park.  It looked cold.  In fact, you could actually watch the snow melt from the mountain tops and run down into the river.

A hot shower was a distant memory at this point and we decided that getting clean was worth the temporary discomfort.  I pulled out my trusty camp soap.  It was advertised to me as a shampoo, body soap, shaving cream, and dishwashing detergent all-in-one environmentally friendly package.  I quickly learned that it did do all of these things, but did none of them well.  Nevertheless, it’s what we had.  Rodger was first.  The process was jump in, scream like a little girl, get out, lather, rinse, and repeat.  While we carried on with this process, we temporarily forgot about our bikes parked along side the road.  We heard a car horn and went to check it out. 

There was a bear sniffing around at our bikes.  I was sure that she had smelled the peanut butter and jelly that we had waiting for us in our saddle bags.

At this point, a line of cars had backed up behind our bikes to watch the bear.  The attention of the drivers quickly shifted from the bear to the half-naked bikers that just emerged from the river.  Dripping wet and still in my boxers, I walked towards the road.  Camp soap bottle still in hand, I waved and yelled for the bear to get away.  After we came to a consensus that this was probably not the best strategy, we returned to the river and gave the bear some time to sort things out for herself.