Been there, done that

Two Jack Campground, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
We sleep in, waiting out the mosquitoes, wink wink nod nod. Walk the dogs, ride our bikes around and around, gathering water, searching out the outhouses. We drive through the early parts of Canada. Dervish faces wind, rain and hills. We argue over the liter/gallon, dollar/dollar, and kilometer/mile conversions, finally using the calculator on my cell phone to figure it out (days later we are absolute experts, with short-cuts that allow us to do the math in our heads).

The going is slow and I get frustrated. The landscape is incredible, tho, so I can't exactly complain out loud. Ok, so when I do complain about how slow the roads are making us, it doesn't gather sympathy and it annoys my car-mates.

Then we get to Banff National Park, and I'm frustrated again because of the entrance fee and the prospect of having to pay for camping ALSO. We end up at Banff National Park Hot Springs. Holy wow, this is the shower experience I needed. 104 degrees (40 degrees C), clear and outdoors, we spend hours here, moving through the pool, resting on the ledge, reacquainting our bodies and auras. We massage each other, we steep and soak and make jokes about when the cannibals will step out with spices and spoons. We talk, about how we love each other; we take a few more steps towards recovery from the forced march of our journey. We talk about how hard it has been, how different from last time, more about learning, experiencing and recording rather than about escape or fun. We both feel like we just want to go home, but we don't know yet where home is.

We soak away our tensions, we are as relaxed as we have been in months, soup to be poured into the seats of the van. We end up late at a forgettable campground, once again chased into the van by mosquitoes.