The lights in the dorms at the hostel came on at 8am, so we were both up around then. My dorm bed was right in the middle of the room and there was a little dresser right at my headboard. Unfortunately I didn't get to sleep right until 8 because someone decided they were going to use that dresser to pack up their stuff around 7:15. She was clunking her hair spray bottle and rustling bags about 5 inches from my head. I don't know why she didn't pack up at her own bed, but I wouldn't have packed up right next to someone's head who was trying to sleep. Since we had leftover cheeseburgers from last night, we had cheeseburgers for breakfast. Not the best breakfast, but we didn't care. There was a microwave we could use to heat them up and we had full bellies afterwards, and that's all that mattered. Joe left the hostel a little earlier than I did since he had to be to the bike shop when it opened to get the broken spoke fixed. Once I was all packed up, I headed down the mountain to town and went back to the little convenience store that had free wi-fi while I waited for Joe. I continued to work on blogs and after Joe's wheel was all fixed, he went to the grocery store to re-stock on a few things. Today is my Mommy's birthday, which I thought was pretty neat since it happened to be day 100 of the trip! Before leaving town, we stopped at the picnic tables by the public "washroom" and snacked on our left over salad mix and had some cookies. We rode for about 12 miles outside of Jasper, which was mostly uphill, before we got to the top of Yellowhead pass (and the Continental Divide again). There we crossed back into British Columbia and shortly after crossed right into Mount Robson Provincial Park. When we crossed the pass we also crossed into the Pacific Time zone! We are now 3 hours behind the time at home which is kind of crazy to me since I've never been this far west. Once we started the descent, we went right into a strong headwind. As we were descending, we weren't going very fast at all as a result. I think my top speed was only 9mph going down. Around our 30 mile mark we stopped at a campground to use a picnic table for lunch. We had extra buns left over from hamburgers and a little peanut butter left, so we snacked on that along with the rest of our salad mix and cookies. I think Fuggee-O cookies are my new favorite kind of store bought cookies, too bad I've never seen them in the states! The ride was a bit hilly for the rest of the day. A little later on, we stopped at a rest area by a lake and had another cookie break. We rode over Red Pass, which wasn't much of a pass, just a really long hill. Shortly after, we made it to Mount Robson where there was a gift shop, visitor center, cafe, and campgrounds. The visitor center was surprisingly still open, but since we were an hour earlier because of the time change it was understandable. We walked around the visitor center and found out it was only $21 to camp at the campground, and there was a shower there! So, we headed to the campground, found our site near the showers, and got our tent all set up. For the first time on the trip, the mosquitoes were pretty bad, so we figured we would try out our bug jackets/hoods to see how they worked. Luckily they worked like a charm, so now we don't have to worry about being up in the Yukon where I'm sure the bugs are really thick. We made some mac and cheese for dinner and while we were doing so, a chipmunk climbed up my bike and tried to get on the picnic table. We had to chase him away quite a few times because I'm sure that if we didn't he would have walked right up to our bowls and eaten right out of them, even though we were sitting right there. The guy who worked at the park came around and collected the money, which I kind of preferred (it was better than just putting your money in an envelop and sticking it in a box). I asked him how the bears were in the area and if there were any bear boxes in the park (we didn't see any when we came in), but to my surprise there were some right on the other side of the bathouse! So, we had a nice place to put all of our food where we didn't have to worry (and were happy that there weren't just sings saying to leave our food in our cars/RV!). After dinner we each had a nice hot shower, which was kind of fun because the park had a shower that you had to push a button to turn the water on. It stayed on for 30 seconds and then you had to push it again. I thought it was a great idea, and probably saved on water in the long run. The shower was wonderful and was nice and hot. After that we went straight to bed. We rode 60.06 miles today.
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