Vancouver, BC, to Creston, BC (770km)
The trip begins with an early morning launch and the familiar straightaway from Vancouver to Hope. This was the prelude to what is one of my favourite rides through the BC Kootenays rolling through Grand Forks, Castlegar, Salmo, and finally Creston. It's beautiful country with perfect biking roads of broad sweepsThe big excitement for the day came as I rode past an active forest fire with helicopter crews dumping loads of water from the nearby Similkameen river. Just past this was a row of fruit stands where I bought some of the famously delicious Summerland peaches and ate them while watching the landscape burn. Creston was the day's destination with plans to cross the border into Idaho the following morning. Also, this was going to be my first night camping so I wanted to find something accessible to develop some camp savvy. My biggest worry about camping was finding spots and I had a list of Googled 'places to camp near Creston'. This was completely useless. I quickly learned that the best strategy is just to ride until you want to stop and start looking. A campsite will reveal itself to you. The one I ended with was nice, if the most expensive of the trip at $25, but also the only one to have the luxuries of a shower and available water. The tent, cooking gear, and foodstuffs all performed flawlessly and a happily uneventful day drifted away.
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First day's route
Clocking in at 27,180km to start the trip
The bike would never be so clean again
First lunch on the road was cold pizza by a corn field
Coming past Osoyoos a forest fire burns the hillside. Helicopters dumped water and RVs stopped to watch.
Another km down the road and a peachstand by Peachland offers the most delicious fruit you could ask for. The fires burn int eh background.
Highway 3, Crowsnest, is a spectacular route for road and scenery.
Osoyoos was hot and full of watersport fans looking for shade.
Getting into the kootneys the mountains rise and the forests begin.
The first camp of the trip was also the most expensive at $25. It had full services such as showers and potable water, which spoiled me for all the other campgrounds to follow.
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6 comments:
27,180 km on the bike before the trip? Love to see the final mileage!
I've put 9000 km on my r1200R in the past 5 months.
I think the final tally was around 6,300km in 9 days. Almost 2,000km in the last two days for the home stretch.
Wow, that's a lot of riding! You must be up for a service!
Interesting use of your Garmin GPS. How did you mount it? Does it cover up the tach/speedo? And did it come in handy during your ride?
Yeah, I love my Garmin 60CSx. It gives street directions, records tracks, barametric altimeter, all the goodies I could want. It's kind of old school, but does everything. the new GPS seem to be more specialized. I also like that it is hand held if i travel off-bike. I take it hiking too.
Oh, and doesn't cover any of the gauges. Screen is a bit small though.
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