First Bear
I did not get eaten!
Ride Summary
Distance: 53 mi / 85kmClimbing: ~3400 feet / 1036 m
Descending: about the same amount
Difficulty: moderate
Link to the bigger part of the workout in Strava
To round out my rest day in Castlegar, I walked down the main street and checked out their many sculptures from their annual competition, and then went for a walk in the park and got to watch as the sunset worked its magic.
Not intended as indirect commentary that today might also be for sale..
Then, got up early today - and must report that I still haven't been to Tim Hortons ("Starbucks of Canada" - there are Starbucks here too, but Tim Horton's is Canadian!). There's just always been some local-er shop I'd rather spend my money at and today's local-er shop was also a mile closer and not up a big hill, so I had a very hearty "breakfast pizza" with my mocha at a tiny coffee stand down the street from my Airbnb, and then rolled out of town.
The route today was pretty nice! About half on the highway, but the highway was also not super busy and thus was nonobjectionable. Transitioned onto rail trail briefly before following part of the Transcanada Trail (which, on the part I rode, was just on a road, but not the highway) into the town of Nelson. During this stint, I met Nacho at a convenience store:
Nacho was the employee of the month, for many months running, the store operator took pains to point out to me. In addition to being the complaints department.
Once I'd left the highway, I was crusing through the less populated side of the shore of the river the route followed all day, and suddenly, a bear walked on to the road about 100' ahead of me! I did not stop to take a picture as I was making a lot of noise to try to make him/her go the other direction, and was considering unholstering my bear spray when a small car drove up. This caused the bear to lope towards me for a moment, but then the bear wandered off the street to the side - but was still standing just in a driveway that I'd have to pass fairly closely. The driver of the car waved me up and I went around the outside of it, putting it between the bear and I. I passed safely and there was no contact nor conflict. I failed to identify the bear type - grizzly? brown? black? aside from "large and dark colored", but that could be any kind of bear...
Near bear, a fun sculpture. Note that it has a cat-skele riding the handlebars and a dog-skele in the back box!
When I pulled up to the ferry terminal, I had just missed the 1pm sailing (I had thought I might miss the 4pm sailing so had set up a hotel on the other side of the ride for late check in, but, spoiler: I got there well before it closed). Not so lucky on this restaurant, which is closed only tuesdays, the only day I would be near it...
So, instead, this is where I sat out the hailstorm that struck just before we boarded the ferry - drinking a milshake, natch! But the reason I took this picture is that in it you can see 3 snow-capped peaks if you look close - I am getting close to the Rocky mountains!!
After the entirely free, 35 minute ferry ride, I waited for all the cars to drain out (there were only a few dozen), so I could make the last heartbreaking climb (almost 500 feet in about 1.5 miles) off the ferry and into town, in peace. 2 cars did still pass me, but there was a single road into a nearby town, and I guess they came from there; almost all of the rest of the traffic was from/to the ferry.
Had dinner at the only place around, and somehow managed to catch the ice cream shop before it closed for second milkshake of the day! First was better, which may be a lesson in diminishing returns, or maybe the second ice cream shop was still brand new (it was) and figuring stuff out (seemed like)? Not sure. It still wasn't bad :) This 2-shake day was a nice consolation prize for finally learning that A&W franchises - which there are more of up here than any other fast food restaurant I've seen (Voice from the future reports that yes, there were far more A&W's than all other fast food chains combined across the entire trip including Quebec) - have stopped selling soft serve so there are no more root beer floats. Took me trying to order one in 3 separate shops to get the message that no, they just don't do that anymore (but their tv-screen menus have not caught up with this reality yet!)