Bill's Journal |
British Columbia 2 |
| Day |
Date |
Entry |
| 7 |
Fri, July 9 |
We cycled about 120 km to a campsite on the west side of Lake Okanagan. We are about 40-50 km north of Kelowna. We decided to forego Kelowna and take the much quieter "Westside Road," which runs up the west rim of the lake.
We asked for adventure and we got it, in the form of two challenges in the early afternoon. My chain got caught between chain ring 2 and the frame. I had to de-link the chain to fix it but my chain wrench broke (a cheap Canadian Tire tool). Fortunately, we had a back-up in the multi-tool, and proceeded on our way. Westside Road is pretty sparsely populated at that point, and it was not a good place to have a bike breakdown. The second challenge came in the form of a vicious climb back up switch-backs that led to a camp. We flew down a 10% grade to Fintry campground, only to find that it was booked solid. We had to haul ourselves at least 150 m back up that same 10% grade to resume our trek. 10 km north, we found this site, and I slept well. Today my bike will be the lightest since the trip started, as we have eaten all of our food and I am minus the weight of one lousy chain wrench.
|
| 8 |
Sat, July 10 |
We left the Lake Okanagan area to enter the mountains again. No serious climbing though; this will come in the next few days. The cycling was good today, but I was feeling tired at the end. We were pretty grubby, so we took a motel. We are now entering country that I would have visited as a kid, when we lived in Calgary. The roads are lovely in B.C. and the province deserves credit to that effect.
|
| 9 |
Sun, July 11 |
Today it is raining, and as we have a short ride, we are waiting in the motel. That's okay though, because we are watching the Tour de France on tv ... waiting until we mount our own bikes and resume our tour.
About an hour out of Sicamous we got clobbered with rain. It was raining so hard that everything was grey. We passed over a rumbling coal train laden with car after car of black coal. This seemed to add to the dark weather. The rain slacked a little and we visited the site of the last spike. An hour later we found a nice coffee shop. We stayed at the KOA in Revelstoke. |
|
 The Last Spike monument |
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| 10 |
Mon, July 12 |
A nice climb to Rogers Pass. Staying at a posh resort tonight. Had an amazing steak. Rogers Pass was not as tough a climb as Highway 3, Hope to Princeton.
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| 11 |
Tue, July 13 |
An easy ride and then a meeting of friends. We rode from the lodge to Golden. It was only a 62K ride. We expected to do more, but to our amazement, the same couple we met on Westside Road pulled up behind us. The four of us decided to stay together for a few days. We crashed the grocery store, then hit the tourist booth. At the tourist booth, we learned that the climb from Golden to Lake Louise was wicked in the beginning with no campgrounds. We decided to camp about 1K east of Golden.
 Sarah, Steve and Bill |
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