Day 7: That's a wrap!

 

It's a wrap!

Distance traveled: 344 km

Total distance: 2257 km

Top speed: 128 kph

Moving average: 83 kph

Temperature range: 13.0 - 36.2

What we counted today. Half helmets: 17

This is how it looks on Hwy 99 early in the morning. Sun coming over the mountains and starting to warm things up... but it takes its time. It was 14 degrees as we left camp, said goodbye to our gal pals, and got on the road. Then the temperature promptly dropped another degree and it was a mere 13. I said to Nan that I was freezing my posterior off as I was dressed for 25-30 degrees. No matter. We were all of 20 km out of Lillooet and as soon as we came out of the mountains, it promptly jumped 10 degrees and we  

were heading down to the "foothills". 

We wanted coffee but were neutral on whether we wanted to stop after only twenty minutes on the road. I pulled over and looked at the map. It was either Lillooet or an hour down the road in Cache Creek. We took a vote with Nan representing 51% of shareholders and me 49% and we went into Lillooet to see if anything looked interesting. 

Amazingly, something DID look interesting! A coffee shop and bakery called A Bun Dance. This was a real discovery because I don't think we have actually stopped in Lillooet before. You have to make an effort because it is not right on the highway; you have to drive off the highway a couple of kilometres to get into the town. It was a pleasant surprise and on our next trip through, I'm sure we will stop there and get something else. They had sandwiches in the counter that looked awesome. We had lattes (of course) and when we saw the blueberry cinnamon buns, we couldn't help ourselves.

As we sat outside on the deck at A Bun Dance, Lillooet started to wake up. At 10:00 am. There was lots of activity of people driving down the

A Bun Dance. You need to stop here.

street, many locals stopped into the bakery to get their day's bread and people were hanging out having coffees. We saw a couple ride by on their Harley and I pointed at the sign for the cafe and the fellow nodded 

as they proceeded onto the gas station. 

A few minutes later they came back and into the bakery. They had ridden from Lytton that morning on their rented Harley and were heading back to Vancouver to fly home to Ottawa, though she was from Quebec. We visited about their ride and then I thanked them for coming out to BC and supporting our economy. He is planning on coming back to do more riding. He said our roads were in so much better condition than theirs! HA!

It would have been nice to hang out there all day but home was calling. Immediately out of Lillooet, across the Fraser River we see there is what looks like a fresh fire up on the top of the mountain being hit by a water helicopter and also being surveyed by a small plane. I see now on the BC Wildfires app that it is not a new fire but from last Sunday. We had been thinking it may have started when we heard thunder the night before. 

Once we had made Cache Creek, we were back tracking on the outgoing ride. My cuzzin Bruce observed that the three domes at Highland Valley Copper Mine are painted like a Canadian flag and are observable from space.

From Google Maps "satellite" view.

A different perspective than above.

We did a little detour at Logan Lake because we had been by it a couple of times lately but didn't know if there were any services there. There aren't, unless you like fire fighters so probably won't be taking a ride there for lunch anytime soon. But we can at least stroke it off our bucket list.

We were home at 2:00 p.m. to see the 360 garbage truck driving away on Astoria, the street behind us closer to the mountain. They had failed to pick up our garbage last week, probably because our bin may have been hidden in a sea of construction vehicles, so we were hoping to get home to put the garbage out this week. We didn't have any agenda when we got up this morning for this, but, as we were cruising along it occurred to us that the garbage might be starting to smell. The second I opened the garage door, I realized that our garage smelled like the municipal dump. I raced into the house, scrambled to get car keys and raced out with the garbage to hopefully find the truck before the driver left the neighbourhood. I did have success but it did involve driving up and down a couple of streets. Now Nan's truck smells like the municipal dump. 

That's it for this blog. Many thanks to those who participated and to you for reading this far. 

Rob P. Responsible for managing our emergencies.

Nan S. Principal photographer.

Howie S. Route finder, author and editor.

Nan's highlight: Camping at Tatla Lake (even without bear fodder) and especially hearing the loons at night.

Nan's low light: Seeing the campground at Barnes Lake.

Howie's highlight: Riding down The Hill and surviving.

Howie's lowlight: Having restaurant owner Patrick guessing my age as "72". WTF!

Day 6. Agent 99

Distance traveled: 319 km including ferry

Cumulative distance:1,913 km

Top speed: 116 kph

Moving average: 69 kph

What we counted. Motorcycles in groups of two or more: 17 groups, 52 motorcycles

The GPS said the travel time to the ferry was 35 minutes so I suggested to Nan we go to Coombs, see some goats on a roof and get a latte before riding to the ferry. Ferry departure was scheduled for 11:05 am which would be just fine, despite the fact that we slept in till 7:30. However, our morning efficiency is improving and we were ready to roll by 9:00 am and off to Coombs we went. Maybe I should have done this first but I start working through my mind that we need to be there at the terminal about 10:15, I need to get gas so in fact, we don’t really have a lot of time to fool around, especially as Coombs is in the opposite direction of the ferry so every minute going in the wrong direction is actually TWO minutes more to get to the ferry. 

We see the Goats On A Roof but turn around to go back to the buildings prior which has an espresso

bar. Can’t find my way into the parking lot because there really isn’t one close to the building but they do have a lot of large, odd sculptures in front of the place: pigs holding a table, a baby camel(?) suckling its mother, coy, puppies, it’s all kind of weird. We park about 200 metres away and walk up and I am thinking more about the time. Inside, there are no other patrons. There is a staff member sitting at a table of jewelry stuff but she doesn’t move. There is nobody behind the counter save a guy who looks like he is servicing equipment and

he asks me what I would like so I tell him, not really expecting anything, two lattes. He says he doesn’t know how to do lattes so he meanders to the back and an older (my age) young lady comes out and catches the attention of the gal sitting in front of the jewelry to come over. This took a good five minutes for this 20 something year old to come over because she obviously has something very large stuck somewhere very small. I ask for two small lattes not too hot because we are going to pound them and get going. I am not sure if she heard me or not but, to be fair, I didn’t say I was in a
hurry and so she wasn’t. She inspected with great care ­– I think she used her jeweler’s loop - the two handles she used to draw the espresso shots, placed the coffee grain by grain into the handle and then was interrupted by the phone ringing. It didn’t matter that there were two other people, so slowly walked over and answered the phone after so many rings I was surprised there was actually a caller still on the line. It was clear she knew the caller and after a minute on the phone, addressed the other female and gave her a description of what the caller needed to discuss. My barista passes the phone over and the matter is handled in about 30 seconds but my she still cannot even get back the five metres to the espresso machine. Now she is inspecting the milk inside the cup and looking over the thermometer because I have reminded her not too hot and made sure she heard me because it would be the icing on the cake that they would be so hot we would not be able to drink them in a hurry. The older gal then BERATES the barista in front of me for walking away from a customer. While this might be fair, it was embarrassing. The whole process took about 15 minutes to get two small lattes, time I had thought we would be sitting outside having a relaxing few minutes before we head off to the ferry. I pound mine and half of Nan’s. We get to the terminal at 10:20 and I forget to tell the agent Nan is a senior and so we spend an extra thousand dollars on the ferry crossing.

Ferry crossings and lunch are a good time to charge up our myriad of electrical gadgets. I say to Nan as we board that we need to find a charging station or electrical outlet. We have nearly two hours for the crossing and we should be able to charge just about everything if I work this right. There are outlets but not too many, though they all seem to have two USB ports so, simultaneously, I charge our two communicators, my phone, the computer, the camera and the electronic camera fob for the GoPro. There was also some scenery outside, apparently. Nothing like getting away from it all.

When we get off the ferry, it is 1:00 p.m. and we are looking forward to the ride down Hwy 99, a prime example of a fun motorcycle road. First, we have to climb the Sea to Sky highway, the road built for the 2010 winter Olympics that transported vehicles from Vancouver to Whistler. This is a windy, narrow road, despite the money spent and it is bumper to bumper traffic. It is a gloriously hot, sunny day so I can understand people trying to escape the city and every little pond,

slough or lake alongside the highway is bustling with sun worshippers and swimmers. Every parking lot is chock full to overflowing as is the highway. However, a lot of the vehicles escape the drive at Whistler but there still remains a lot of congestion. It isn’t until Pemberton, where we take a break, that the traffic really starts to diminish.

We need a bite and a reprieve from the heat so we stop at Town Square restaurant. Pemberton is a

whopping 42.2 degrees. I’m wearing gym shorts under my mesh motorcycle gear and it feels like I’m wearing jeans. This would be close to a record for warm weather riding for us. I actually saw the thermometer read hotter but it was during slow moving traffic so that reading may not be accurate. The waitress in the bar brings us glasses and a jug of ice water and leaves the jug on the table. We drank just about the whole thing along with two large lemonades. The food was also outstanding.

East of Pemberton is where the riding gets really interesting. Pemberton actually goes on for quite awhile so it takes some time to actually exit the “urban” area, which really consists of small farms and acreages. Twice we see signs warning us about mustangs (wild horses, not cars) on the road. The road is twisty and hilly. It is a lot of fun but you always have to be careful what might be on the road around the next corner, a vehicle crossing the centre line or an animal in the ditch so we take it

easy. The added benefit is that I get to look around occasionally and won’t have to wait to see the pictures at the end of the day to see what we saw.

Less than an hour out of Pemberton, we come to a series of campgrounds I have identified previously as potential sleeping spots for the night. The first is a beautiful little camp sitte on the edge of the Cayoosh River, which at the campsite, is quite wide and would make for a great swimming spot. However, there are no other campers to act as bear fodder, so we elect to push on. Plus, unbeknownst to

Nan, there is a sign that says “mother grizzy and cub in the area. Do not approach”. Well, that’s helpful advice. The sign was dated June 27^th so I wasn’t overly worried but I knew it would give Nan anxiety. The campgrounds come in rapid succession around here so I am not worried about finding a suitable one.

We check out a couple more. They are right along the highway so easy to access and they are all

along one river or another so that is good because we are going to go swimming or whatever. One campground actually has quite a few campers which is a surprise to us because we haven’t seen any campers in the three campgrounds we checked prior. Strength comes in numbers, apparently. Bear fodder. Several campers here are motorcycling as
 there are five touring/adventure bikes and somebody with a couple of dirt bikes that he is towing behind his RV. There are two gals adjacent us, one, Dawn, riding a new Harley Davidson Pan

That's Jill on the left, Dawn on the right.

Harley Davidson Pan American

Honda CB 500

\

  

\America. She is tall but finding it a lot to handle off road. It looks massive but in fact, is just 560 pounds “wet”.  The other gal Jill is riding a Honda CB 500 tricked out for adventure riding. They met during the pandemic on a gravel-riding course in which they were the only two participants and have become riding buddies since then. Both from Victoria, they subsequently discovered that they knew the same of the same people, lived quite close (20 minutes walk, with a pub in between), went to the same physio clinic and owned the same camping gear. Kharma.

Nan and I had our swim in the river. It’s cold, I can tell you. We both got right down and in the water, which wasn’t all that easy as the river is not that deep and moving pretty fast. At the same time, some dark clouds form overhead and we hear several cracks of thunder but we are spared any rain and all our gear stays dry.

Here are some selected shots from the day.

Derelict house near Horseshoe Bay

View from the Sea to Sky

Glacier lake.

From Pemberton.

It gets steeper.

Watch out for Ford Mustangs!

Day 5: The Island

Distance 418.5

Cumulative distance: 1, 594 km

Top speed 127 kph

Moving average 82 kph

Temp range 18.8 - 30.0

What we counted. motorcycles plain and simple: 20

 For a pleasant change, a leisurely morning. Even though we were awake pretty early, we lounged around in bed drinking hotel-room coffee till it suited us.

As we were loading up, we chatted with two "senior" gentlemen who had parked their bikes next to ours. One bike was a pretty new FJR, which is a big, serious sport touring bike with small panniers. It must be compensating. The other was a pretty old R100GS BMW touring bike. We had noticed the bikes last night and admired them so it was great that we got to meet the owners this morning.

The BMW rider was from Surrey and the FJR rider from somewhere in Washington, judging by his plates. They were in Port Hardy to catch the ferry to Bella Coola but bailed because the road is now closed due to the Young Creek Wildfire. If you checked out the link I inserted in the previous posting, you will know that the wildfire is now straddling both sides of Hwy 20 on The Hill. They were motivated to do the ferry ride but not twice since that would be the only way back out. Now they were looking for roads to fill up the next eight days they had originally planned for riding.

These fellows were friendly and we exchanged tips on where to ride. I suggested some of my favourite rides around home but the Surrey guy had done them all. He was celebrating TWENTY-FIVE years of retirement, along with his 74th birthday and spent a lot of his retirement time riding, it seems. He told us about riding 7,000 km in New Zealand with his wife over 21 days. "Two-up" I ask? Nope, she rides her own bike. His buddy with his new-ish FJR was 82 years young. Both still going really strong. There's hope for us yet.

 On the road at exactly 10:00 am but straight to the gas station as we were low and stations are a little sporadic this far north in the island. Because we are having a leisurely start, we are already a little hungry. Normally, we like to ride an hour or more before breakfast as that helps break up the day but we could only last to Port McNeil, a whopping 35 minutes from Port Hardy. I had checked online earlier in the morning for what might be open and I had my doubts but we were rewarded.

We ended up at Tia's Cafe. Pretty non-descript. Tia's is in an outdoor strip mall and the parking lot is adorned with photos of kids from the 2023 high school graduation class. It's quirky, quaint and sweet all at the same time.

Tia is a Latina and she sells dried peppers, Quince and a few other goods from Latin America and some touristy stuff, like shopping-mall "original" art. I wonder how much of a market there is in Port McNeil for her Latin American products. What's great, though is that she is one hell of a baker. We each had a savory scone that was so good, we split a muffin for dessert along with our lattes. A little bit thin for a meal but it would keep us going for a couple of hours.

Northern Vancouver Island is under rated at a destination, in my mind. As you drive along the coastal highway, there are good opportunities to see a beautiful coast line. However, a good portion of the journey is inside a tunnel of trees so between Port McNeil and Campbell River, the only real view is of the trees. However, we know from other visits to the north of the island, there are great destinations to visit like Port Alice, Gold River and of course, Tofino. If you are o.k. with gravel roads, there are endless possibilities.

We stopped in Cumberland for a little break and check the bearings on the GPS, which is confusing me. It keeps wanting to send us back fr

Port McNeil high school graduates

Tia's. Can you tell someone was ready for coffee?

Either a drone or the blade from a windmill.

om whence we came. Back when we had decided we would move to B.C. for retirement but were unsure as to where we might want to live, we had been giving serious consideration to Vancouver Island. We had looked around Courtney Comox but on one trip, Nan had stumbled across Cumberland, which looked like it had numerous possibilities as a destination. While not on the water, it was a town with a rich mining history as well as “immigration” from China and Japan. There is so much character in the architecture and character that I suggest to Nan we should come back and have a camping holiday nearby.

We rode slab all the way to near Nanaimo where we are camping tonight at Englishman Falls. We had originally planned to ride side roads as much as possible however, we made a beeline to the campground because we were going to have a visit from my high school buddy Tim and his girlfriend Carol who live on the island.  They bring treats: a charcuterie board in a pizza box! And they bring their own lawn chairs, on their motorcycles. I figure out that the GPS was confused because I had originally programmed side roads into the route and it resisted my efforts to take us down Highway 19. It seems the GPS hates slab riding as much as I do.

Cumberland

Setting up camp at Englishman Falls