Day 1 - Riding with Aaron and Kelly

Our first day of riding…almost 300k…..not much but our destination was approximately 2 hours north west of Calgary at the Mountain Air Lodge.  Here we have a room booked in a rustic ‘outpost’ on the forest trunk road.  I call it an outpost as the rooms are in a long log structure, the restaurant/store is constructed by linking 3 transport truck bodies side by side and the gas is pumped directly out of a large tank into the awaiting pick-up and four wheelers.  We have stayed here in the past and the rooms have been spotless, the food limited but great and the gas …well it’s gas…..

Since we have Kelly and Aaron with us, the one room is not enough for the four of us…sooooo we have a compromise….the girls get the room and the boys get to camp…..Kelly is out niece from Toronto, visiting her Aunt in Calgary and Aaron is a riding buddy from the Mexico trip.  Now Kelly rides with us in Ontario but it's usually on the back of our Harley, so this is quite a change for her.  Aaron has his own BMW 800 with the new addition of side bags.

The camp site is on a bow in a beautiful mountain fed river…the water is the color of  the Caribbean…but man is it a lot colder.  Now don’t feel sorry for the boys, they just popped a bag of popcorn to take with them…. and since we are all a bit tired they’ll be sleeping like babies in no time.

Once we got checked in we took a road we have never taken before to a camping area where everyone brings their horses.  It’s pretty cool as there are horses and riders all over the place….and these are the real cowboy horses not  like the beauties of Ontario.

The end of the road wasn’t that far and we had a great ride down a smooth but dusty gravel road in between 2 mountain ranges.  At the end of the road there was the camping area on one side and a waterfalls on the other.  We did the hike up to the waterfalls but that was tougher going than any of us expected…we all feel out of shape…I think it’s the thinner air.  Haha

We had dinner in the room watching the day’s videos then it was off to repack and get ready for the night for the boys and Facebooking for the girls….we did manage to get a connection even out here.  Yeah Kelly!!!