I’m currently in Caribou Lodge, Clinton, British Columbia. I’m thinking I should have done a blog yesterday because today has blown yesterday away. We did quite a bit of mileage on an Interstate yesterday (boring) with our one big detour being to Mount St Helen, when after about a 10 mile ride up twisty roads in the pouring rain to the observation point of a neighbouring mountain (Mount St Helen is still an active volcano) we discovered we were in the clouds and couldn’t see anything!
We then stayed at the most dire Motel ever. Without being racist it is our experience that motels run by Americans are usually good whereas motels run by Asian Indians in America (a growing phenomena) are run down with poor service. You can guess who ran this motel. However I slept well and was on the road again at seven. After an hour we were through a very friendly Canadian custom point and quickly driving through the outskirts of Vancouver, To the north of Vancouver we drove the coast road a bit and the scenery was breathtaking. We then started going inland through the valley of a mountain range and for mile after mile you just experienced both exquisite roads and scenery. British Columbia is huge!!
After about a two hundred and twenty odd mile ride the tour leader said there was a dirt rode to the hotel (which was ten miles away) – which we had to do, or lose face. So I then did about 10 miles standing on the pegs riding through mud and shale. But we all stayed on and I won’t be doing anymore of that. The upside is the motel is top class and the owner is a biker who threw 100 dollars in the till for our drinks. Great guy!
One observation about driving in BC. You look at your sat nav and don’t see any other roads than the one your on most of the time. That’s because there aren’t any. There’s just one road going through vast sways of wilderness with small hamlets dotted along it every 50 or 100 miles. Not a place to break down in.
Beware of the bear (or actually ‘don’t feed the bear’) signs have been appearing for the last 100 miles, but we haven’t seen any yet.
Well I guess that’s it for the moment. I was thinking as I rode I should have a tape recorder to record my thoughts as by the time I blog I have forgotten half I thought and saw – like the experience of riding through Seattle in the pouring rain yesterday on a road network that makes spaghetti junction look like a toy. But I guess a recorder would be overkill. I’ll try and post some pictures now if I don’t fall asleep first. Bye for now.