Wednesday July 1, 2015

Another early start (7:00) on the road. Just after we left the campsite we spotted two touring cyclists doing a circle route of BC. She had cycled the Pacific Coast Highway last summer and really enjoyed it – “got hooked”.

We came into the smallest City in BC – Greenwood.

During its hey day in the late 1890’s the City had 14 hotels, two newspapers, two banks and a 1,000 seat opera house. The City thrived on the copper smelter.

On this route, there are nice rest areas.  This is one of them, the next one is 57 kms down the road.

Today’s climb was a 41 km climb, but a very easy 2% grade at maximum. We only reached a high of 1,023 metres and the elevation was 633 metres – easy peasey, lemon squeesy.

What was really easy was the downhill, I didn’t peddle for 11 kms!. The downhill grade was about 5% and not too many twists and turns.

As we came down the hill towards Grand Forks, I spotted the sign for the Dukhobors Mill. The Dukhobors were Russian pacifist who left Russia and first settled in Saskatchewan, they then moved en-masse to BC.

We had a great tour by the young man who was volunteering at the site.

I chatted to a lovely couple outside of the grocery store. The gentleman started the conversation with “You must be hard core cyclists – Brook saddles”. He explained that when he was younger the “upgrade” on the road bike was a Brooks saddle, which meant you were a hardcore cyclist.

Today was a day for meeting lovely people. Our neighbours in the campsite are from Washington State. They are here in Grand Forks because their son is in a baseball tournament here. Helen and I had a lovely conversation about our ride. She asked me what I would do when we go through Barrie. I told her Ralf is concerned I might want to stop. She told me not to go through Barrie as it might be too tempting to stop.

There is also another group of cyclists here, they are being supported, they are from the US and Canada and one Kiwi.

It was a lovely campsite, adjacent to the river. After we set up the tent we went for a lovely swim in the river. The current was quite strong, so I stayed in the shallows.

Ralf hates camping too many bloodsuckers out there, he has just come into the tent complaining about being eaten alive.