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!