Take off... to the Great White North!

Yesterday we flew into Calgary via Toronto. We prayed and prayed that our bikes would all arrive in one piece.

Thankfully, we had enlisted Carmie's help in packing them. Who knew one of her hidden talents was building custom-sized non-rectangular cardboard boxes?

We stayed up late packing the night before.

And finally, we were off! With the most and largest bags I have ever checked on a flight. Katelyn's dad Mike flew with us and helped us out tremendously. His favorite joke to passers-by was that we were bringing two big-screen TVs on our wilderness trip ;)

Once we got to Calgary, we made a shopping run for food and all the dangerous stuff you can't bring on planes.

When we finally got to Banff, we opened up our bike boxes to find... they were in pieces! But thankfully, it was the exact same number of pieces we had packed them in. We spent an hour or so re-assembling them, and when we finished, they were in great shape!

After we finished re-assembling our bikes, we ate a celebratory dinner in the hostel cafe which included certain Canadian signature items such as poutine and Canadian beers.