A pleasant downhill from the summit
Unremarkable easy day riding, with a museum stop
Ride Summary
Distance: 33 mi / 53 kmClimbing: 1106 feet / 337 m
Descending: 2810 feet / 856 m
Difficulty: medium-easy
Perhaps the most interesting part of yesterday evening and this morning was the campground host, Markus, who retired to this spot on a mountaintop less than 5 miles from the US border, has big dreams for building an off-grid cabin community on his land - but in his words "[...] not a long hair dope smoking nobody does anything" kinda place. He seemed like good people and I hope to bring Lori up sometime while we're staying with my sister who has a cabin in the woods about 1.5 hours due south in Washington state. The road riding here is, well, pretty much the highway but there are some mountain bikeable trails around that we might check out. I slept like a baby ("it's the altitude!" said Markus) and awoke rested and took my time getting onto the road today, since I knew I didn't have a ton of riding to do before the end of the day.
Strava tells me it was one of my fastest rides for the first 10 miles - as it was mostly downhill for the first 10 miles :). Zoomed down without incident into a couple small forgotten towns, one of which had a cute museum mostly about the Kettle Valley Railway which ended in that town (Midway - coincidentally Midway through my ride today!) But, like most of the museums I would visit over the course of the trip, it also had a focus on area history, about which I read many placards. I also climbed to the top of a caboose (that little "thingie" on top in the back is window seats for the caboose-man to be able to look out over his train and make sure it isn't on fire or anything!), and became glad that I was not biking like the rail guys did:
...since my noodle arms wouldn't be a ton of use pumping that thing down the rails!
Rolled into my destination town in a still and hot afternoon, but the hotel of my dreams (actually: google searched) was accommodating! So, I got cleaned up, did some sink laundry since there was no laundromat in town, and then walked down to the patch of businesses so I could get fed, and found enough cell signal there to call Lori and chatted for a half hour.
Apropos of nothing: I found this juxtaposition funny:
Tomorrow is a not-bad-looking day; the following day is another brutal climb, though! So, while I'll take all good vibes at any time, I really need them the day after tomorrow (particularly in the morning since the climb is first 25 miles out of town)!