Lake Louise, Alberta

August 3, 2025

In the three years and 2-ish months since we started our adventure in May of 2022, we had only been sick once (in January of 2023). That time, we were lucky to be parked in Florida with no place to go and nothing to do but sit around and recover. Well, we can now officially say that we have been sick two times.

Rick started coming down with whatever we got (most likely flu or COVID) on Sunday night while we were still in Banff (thankfully after the kids had left and after laundry, shopping, and putting everything away). It started out as a slight scratchy throat, and we didn't think much about it. After traveling about an hour to the Lake Louise campground and setting up at the new campsite, Rick was exhausted and took a long nap that afternoon. The next morning, he never got out of bed. He barely got out of bed on Wednesday, either. During this time, Julie was feeling mostly fine, but she had a very slight tickle in the throat from time to time. The weather these days was gorgeous, so Julie would go out and walk the nearby trail along the Bow River and take a chair to read by the water for a couple hours each day. The campground and surroundings were quite beautiful.

All the sites were "buddy" sites, but we usually only had neighbors arrive in the evening and leave early morning

Our site wasn't the best, as it was right by a bathroom and there was slight annoying hum from the nearby water treatment station. Plus, there was the freight train that went by every 2 or 3 hours, day and night. Oddly, we really weren't that bothered by any of these things, and the campground was actually a nice relaxing place to be sick for a week.

Just steps from our campsite was a network of trails along the Bow River

Perhaps some of these pictures are redundant, but every time Julie went out, she felt like she had to photograph something 😉

This is the spot where Julie sat and read one afternoon

Julie's tickle eventually turned into what seemed like a cold, but she wasn't feeling too bad, and she thought she had gotten away with something.

On Friday, Rick was doing better--better enough to lie be overly optimistic that he felt good enough to take a 9-mile round trip bike ride to the actual Lake Louise. It's so close, we just have to go, right? It was a pretty trail, although Julie wasn't fond of riding down the steep gravely switchbacks. Julie has had some bad experiences on loose gravely hills before, and has a little bit of PTSD in that regard. But, it was nice to get out and about.

The first part of the trail followed the beautiful Bow River

The adjacent campground was for tents and thus was surrounded by electrified fence to keep the bears out

You can see a freight train going over the bridge on the right. It made its presence known several times each day and night during our stay.

The switchbacks weren't bad going up, but Julie does not like going down steep gravely trails like this

Nice views from up here!

It was a nice, peaceful trail...

...until we suddenly found all the crowds and tour busses and such!

Everybody needs their selfies!

Reaching over the heads of people sitting on the deck, Julie was able to get this shot. Kind of fools you into thinking that this is not a crowded place, doesn't it?

We had brought some chairs and snacks with us, thinking we might be able to find a "quiet-ish" corner of the lake to sit for a while, but there was no such place where we could easily walk our bikes to. So, after snapping a few pictures, we decided to leave. Besides, Rick wasn't really feeling that awesome, anyway.

On Friday evening, Julie's "just a cold" took a turn for the worse, and by Saturday she was in full-on fever and chills mode, just like Rick had been. Sunday was generally better for both of us, but we didn't have any energy to go out anywhere and our coughs sounded pretty horrific. The weather wasn't the best on Saturday and Sunday anyway.

So, we're just kind of biding our time at this point, hoping that health and renewed energy aren't too far around the corner. All in all, we have been very fortunate during our travels to have had good health, and for that we are very grateful.

Postscript:

Julie was so eager to launch into telling all about how we got sick, that she had forgotten to include these pictures from the drive from Banff:

The drive was mostly rainy with some breaks in the clouds here and there. Banff National Park has several of these wildlife bridges over the Trans-Canada highway.

This blue sky did not last long

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