Denny Across Canada: On the Road Again, pt II

Biking back along the brewery's 2 km driveway, I reflected on my luck to have met the great owners. Soon my reflections were interrupted by two cows on the road.

They seemed pretty freaked out by my bike and jogged ahead of me for a bit until they ran away over a small meadow.

Turning the next corner I was suddenly faces with their friends. All 20 of them and all standing in front of the gate. The two I had chases promptly walked out of the woods and joined them.

After a minute or two of gentle reassurances and creative sign language, I managed to open a narrow path to the cattleguard and successfully escaped Cowtopia. Back onto the gravel to retrace my steps.

The 30 km back to the pavement was much nicer than the day before, fortified by a solid sleep and some non-dehydrated meals. I did take a few snack breaks but also just rode it nice and slow and enjoyed the scenery. I only had about 80 km based on rough map calculations to ride, aiming at a rec site on the northwest side of Francois Lake.

After an hour and a half I reattained the pavement and promptly picked up an extra 5 km/hr or so. A sign warned me of heavy logging traffic for the next 40 km but being Sunday, I only passed about 6 or 7 vehicle the entire day. Soon a light tailwins caught me and my pace increased yet again. Everything was coming up Denny.

Around lunchtime the gravel returnes and I spent the next hour slowly climbing a nice, easy gradient up the ridge between Francois and Ootsa Lakes. As I cleared the summit, I could see a large stormcloud sweeping away east across Francois Lake, but it looked to be missing me completely. I even had a brief glimpse of some mountains to the west. Nice.

I was rewarded for my climbing at last and enjoyed a long, winding descent back to the lake, and a deceivingly short flat section before getting a reminder that BC road engineers take perverse delight in sending their roads over every possible hill. Short but steep and winding hills along with periodic showers were the theme for the last hour and a half of the day. At one point, what looked very like a cougar butt disappeares around a copse of aspen.

Just as I was beginning to wonder if I had missed the turnoff for my rec site, it appeared around the next corner. Showers were rolling in again so I quickly set up camp, and began cooking dinner in the cook shelter while polishing off a book.

I had the rec site all to myself and spent the rest of the night reading and pensively wandering around in my raincoat. The darkness rolled in by 7:45 pm and, exhausted by a few big days, fell asleep early.

The next day I woke up with the sunrise again, cooked a slow breakfast, packed up my poor, sopping wet tent and began peddaling by 8:30.

Feeling quite frigid, I had to wear a hoodie, rain jacket and gloves. I had to wonder if I was just being a wuss, since there was no sign of frost and my breathe wasn't fogging. At my mid morning stop I found one bar of service, and checking the weather, realized it had been +1°C that morning. Probably one of the coldest mornings I will see for a while hopefully. The morning ended up being a lovely spin along the lake, with few hills and the sun coming out by 10 am. A few locals called out from their yards to make sure I was okay. I guess they don't get much in the way of bike touring traffic out here.

I made it back to the ferry landing by 11 am and scooted over two short hills back to Burns Lake by lunch time. I sent off a few quick messages to assure people I had not been eaten by cougars or creamed by a logging truck and then began humping my bike back up the steep road to Kager Lake.

The rain had unfortunately made the road quite soupy, so I had to grind up in my easiest gear to make it through the mud, despite the slope being only 8 or 9%. Luckily my car was undisturbed and I gratefully changed into clean clothes and ate a chocolate bar while drying the tent in a nice ray of sun.

After catching my breathe for a half an hour, I popped into town with the car, demolished a hamburger, picked up some groceries and beer and returned to Kager Lake to celebrate the successful test tour.

Next up, south to the Okanagan.

"oh, would like you like to use this road?"