Isn't it ironic that I can sleep peacefully for more than eight hours in a nylon tent, out in the freezing cold woods, on a Therma-rest sleeping pad that's only a half-inch thick...and as soon as I get into a luxurious warm bed, I can't sleep at all?

John and I slept poorly that night, despite our comfortable bed.  It was probably because we had the TV on for the first time in nearly two weeks; it's probably because we weren't used to having the TV on while trying to fall asleep.  Yeah, that's it...it was the TV...

Even though we slept poorly that night, we were up bright and early that morning, around 6:00 a.m., ready to start another day of adventure.  Or, at least, John and Mary were ready for adventure; I, on the other hand, was ready for a little R&R, beginning with a full body, sixty-minute massage at the spa.

But first: breakfast.  Instead of eating cold cereal in our room, as we had done every morning during our trip, John and Mary and I walked over to the Lodge to have breakfast at the Meadows Restaurant.  We ate from their breakfast buffet, which had an extensive selection of items, and everything was delicious. 

After breakfast, I retreated to the spa to have my wonderful, relaxing, full body massage; and John and Mary returned to the cabin to retrieve the camera.  Instead of sticking around the lodge, they decided to do something fun and exciting - though, they weren't quite sure what they wanted to do yet.  They thought about going horseback riding, but they weren't sure that they wanted to do another two-hour trail ride.  Then, John had the perfect idea: they could rent bicycles and go for a fun, two-hour ride.

They rented a pair of bicycles from the recreation center, located near the tennis courts, and rode them out onto the trail that followed the Athabasca River.  At first, Mary had a lot of difficulty riding her bicycle on the dirt trail. She had only learned how to ride without training wheels about six months earlier, when Aunt Lotte spent Super Bowl Sunday working with her; and, up to that point, she had only spent time riding on asphalt.  Riding on dirt was completely different.  Eventually, she got the hang of it, and it wasn't long before John couldn't keep up with her!

Mary and John rode out to the Old Fort Point Trail, located off of the Beauvert Lake Access Road.  John had been interested in hiking to Old Fort Point, so this was his opportunity to make it to the top.  Unfortunately, they weren't going to be able to make it all the way on the bicycles; so they went as far as they could, then left the bikes behind and continued on foot all the way to the top. 

Once at the top, they saw an incredible sight: an osprey nest, containing a mother osprey and her chicks.  John immediately zoomed in on them and snapped a couple of pictures, so that he could show me when they returned. 

Meanwhile, following my massage, I returned to the cabin to relax...more or less.  Since I had the cabin to myself, I was free to do whatever I wanted...but being the mom that I am, I spent my time getting our gear organized and cleaning up our muddy boots and socks and gaiters, all of which we had left outside to dry.  (When John saw that, he, of course, snapped a picture of our wet, muddy gear, drying out on the porch.  "Only we could go to a five-star resort and leave our muddy boots out on the porch," he remarked.)

After John and Mary returned, we took a walk to the lodge, so that Mary could finish collecting the stamps in her activity book; she was able to get one while they were renting their bicycles - and another when I went to the spa for my massage - so she only had three to go.  We were able to get these stamps quickly.  Excitedly, Mary raced up to the Bell Desk to retrieve her prize.

The Bellman was pleased to see that Mary had completed her scavenger hunt; he was even more pleased to announce to her that they had just stocked up on new prizes, so she would have her pick of fun stuff.  She selected a very nice box of Dominoes, which she had never played before; John promised to show her how to play the game.

That afternoon, we decided to leave the lodge and go into town for lunch; we also brought our camp stove with us, in hopes of finding a shipping store.  Now that we were done backpacking, it was time to ship our camp stove back home.  There was no way that we were going to be able to take it on the plane with us, not when it smelled like fuel - and we didn't have a way of cleaning it - so our only hope was to ship it home, using ground transportation, and pray that it didn't get confiscated going through Customs.

We managed to find a Mail Time near the Jasper Liquor Store, so we went inside and asked about shipping home our camp stove.  The lady working there apparently didn't get many requests to do such a thing, but she went out of her way to accommodate us.  First, she found a small box - free of charge - in which we could place our stove; then, she found some packing peanuts that we could use to keep the stove from being shaken about too much.  Finally, she helped John with the paperwork, to ensure that he had everything filled out correctly. 

And with that, we said good-bye to our camp stove and wished it a safe journey back home.  As we walked out of the shop, we wondered if we would ever see it again, or would we be buying a new one? 

(On a side note, the stove did make it home...two weeks later.  It sat in Edmonton for over a week while it was inspected by Customs; then, finally, it was put on a truck to be delivered to Arizona.  When it arrived, in mid-August, we celebrated, because we truly did not expect to ever see it again.)

Having accomplished that task, we were ready to go to lunch.  At first, we wanted to have Subway, because we were still pretty full from the breakfast buffet; but when we saw that the line at Subway was too long, we went next door to the Jasper Brewing Company.  That ended up being the better choice; it was a nice place and wasn't crowded at all; and it gave John the chance to teach Mary how to play Dominoes.  Of course, she thought it was much more fun to set the Dominoes up and knock them over...

After lunch, we returned to Jasper Park Lodge and grabbed our swimsuits for an afternoon at the pool.    We spent two hours at the pool, enjoying the warm sunshine and the cool water. 

While we were in the pool, John and Mary started competing for the possession of the pool noodles.  Mary started out with one, but John had two.  Mary collected another noodle, but so did John.  Soon, they had four noodles each and all was good, so they called a truce and moved onto something else: buoyancy.  They combined their collection of pool noodles and sat on them, to see how high up on the water they would float.  John was halfway out of the water with all of those pool noodles under his bum; Mary, on the other hand, was sitting on top of the water!

Once we were nicely pruned, John and I emerged from the pool and walked over to the bar for a drink.  Mary remained in the pool and played with a four year-old red-haired girl, who, despite her young age, was an amazing swimmer.  They two girls played games with the pool noodles until they were bored; then, Mary resumed collecting pool noodles until she had everyone single one in the pool.

By the time we returned to our cabin, I wasn't feeling very good.  I was suddenly nauseous and felt like I was going to throw up.  I'm not sure what caused it, but it felt like I had a bad case of food poisoning.  As soon as I was back in our room, I laid down and took a nap, hoping to sleep it off. 

I still wasn't quite right when dinnertime rolled around, but nonetheless, I went to dinner with Mary and John anyway.  We went to a place called Something Else, which turned out to be a Greek restaurant (OPA!).  The food was good, but it was hard to enjoy it with that feeling of "yuck" churning in my stomach.  It did eventually settle down, by bedtime, but it did spoil John's plans to go canoeing at dusk on Beauvert Lake.

It was a shame that such a nice, relaxing day had to end that way; I just hoped that I felt better in the morning, because we had another big day ahead of us...our last full day in Canada...

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