We stayed in Penticton with Vern, who was one of the cooks on Tour De Jasper. The day before, we weren't sure if we were going to be staying with him that night, or if we'd have to find a campsite. As we had left late that day, we weren't arriving into Penticton until 7:30-8:30 ish at the earliest.
We did eventually get in touch with him, he was away all weekend at a family reunion.
He offered to make breakfast next morning, but as he was so tired from the weekend's activities, he slept in! That's ok, we left a note and had breakfast down the road at an A&W. That's where I saw the neat old British Foldup bike. I wish I could remember the name of it. I think I have it recorded on my camera files.
We left and started riding. I could have biked along this neat bike path along a canal, too bad that I didn't know that it was there until it was too late! There was no way to get to it along the way. We saw a lot of riders, more then I have seen anywhere on the trip. Penticton is a bicycling town. The canals reminded me of the UK and it's canals with slow moving water. Penticton would be a nice place to hang out for a while.
We had to climb some small hills out of Penticton and then it was easy going until Kaleden. We turned off onto Highway 3 (Crowsnest) and then the real hills started! The heat made going up them harder. Our goal that day was to make it to Princeton.
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| Watching for bears on downhill to Keremeos (look closely) |
As we climbed up I saw a peak by Keremeos, we were going back into the mountains, this time the Cascades. There was no way to avoid them! We had quite a bit of a descent into Keremeos. We visited with some friend's of Jim's who live in the old RCMP building. We ended up eating lunch at this older restaurant in the downtown area. Apparently they make awesome Borscht!
After a nice visit, we headed out towards Princeton. I was able to pick up a few free apricots along the way at one of the many fruit stands along the way to nibble on. It was the first fruit I had eaten for a while, despite having rode past many a fruit stand. Oh, it tasted so good!
As we were riding the headwinds picked up. There were many small hills to ride over and those along with the headwinds, slowed us down quite a bit. We soon realized that we wouldn't be able to make it to Princeton. We were both getting tired.
We stopped in Hedley, which in it's heyday, was a gold mining town. You could see the ruins of the mine on a hill overlooking the village. It's very small now, and there isn't much there. Not even a campsite! We had to bike another 5 kms to a campsite, so I treated myself to an ice cream to motivate me to do a little more.
We found these 2 campsites, which were literally right next door to each other! I met a couple in a big motor-home and they were the ones who treated us to muffins and tea. They had 3 dogs which were the same ones featured in the Wizard of Oz movie with Judy Garland. This couple had sold house in Calgary and could work from anywhere. They were living out of the motorhome looking for a suitable place to live both in Canada and the USA (Winter). Lucky! Though from the size of the motorhome, they were quite well off and had nothing to worry about. Very nice couple though, they were amazed at how far we had travelled by bicycle.
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