Sparwood, BC

Today's mileage- 350 km. About 1450 traveled so far. This has been the visiting, wine-ing and dining segment of the trip. We'll do some serious mileage after Calgary.

Left the provincial park around 9:40, but missed the Balfour ferry by a hair. Forced to drink coffee and eat cinnamon buns to make ourselves feel better.

Met a 50-something Albertan on the ferry riding a ducati, the perfect bike for these roads. He'd gotten up at 6:30 am and ridden the Kaslo to Nakusp run 3 times before catching the ferry and heading home.

The riding here doesn't get any better. Road surfaces very good and spectacular scenery around every turn. There's lots of turns.

Once again, we're experiencing empty roads. Guess that's the benefit of traveling when the kids are still in school.

Ate a sandwich by the side of the road under sunny skies. Only takes a couple of hours of riding and the vegetation changes to Ponderosa Pines and grasslands.

By 4:30 I felt tired and irritable. Found everything Gib said irritating as hell. He wanted to have his picture taken beside the biggest truck in the world. I wanted to find a campspot and take my boots off. Poor Gib.

We're spending the night in Sparwood and drying everything out. Was forced to hold our sheepskins under the hand dryer back at the campground in Nelson so we didn't end up with wet bottoms.

Here's Gib...

I didn't notice that she was irritable. The road from Crawford Bay to Creston would be beautiful to do without the tent trailer. But then, for some reason much of it is 60 k and should be 80. It was noticeable when we stopped doing as much climbing and the bike rode along nicely.

Some of the mountain views coming into the lowland are amazing. The nice thing about the slower speeds it that you can look around more. Still getting sightings of wildlife. Saw a coyote coming out of Cranbrook.

Today was a great day. Got to remove the liner of our jackets and were very comfortable. I really dig the fact that we have wifi at our campsite.

Each day I'm finding new ways to pack stuff and it gets easier. Will be great to do it in a completely dry environment. We know now that we can be ready around 9:30 a.m. We just can't make the 9:50 ferry. On to my folks tomorrow.