The Great White North - Day 7 - "Up and Down"

Day 7 (7/17/19)

As predicted by the weather service, we woke up to rain.  So we got all of our gear on in the hotel room before heading out into the damp morning.  It was also pretty foggy which was a bummer riding up the Sea to Sky Highway as it would have been nice to see the scenery some.  We mounted our trusty iron steeds, filled up the tanks, and off we road into the shit.  Worse than even the rain is all of the kick up from the other vehicles.  You’re constantly getting hammered with wet road grime in addition to what’s falling from the sky making it exponentially crappier.

It was also a bummer riding through Whistler and not really being able to see anything going through.  I am a snowboarder and have always talked about taking a trip up to Whistler, so it would have been nice to at least have seen it, but alas we rode right through on our journey seeking drier roads.

It was only a few hours or so before we were out of the rain which was amazing since we were prepared for a similar situation from only a few days prior.  Once we dried out some we got to see some beautiful country on the way up to Lillooet, the northern most point on our trip.  We passed by multiple mountain lakes, all so beautiful.  We also encountered a few RVs but nothing nearly as bad as going up 101.

Eventually we made it down into Lillooet where we stopped for some fuel and a snack.  It was so pretty looking all around us because we were down in this valley with large mountains surrounding us on every side.  It too was cool to think that we’d taken our bikes to the farthest point we’d planned for this trip.  Theoretically it was all downhill from here!

We got out of town pretty quick as there wasn’t really a ton to see other than the pretty scenery which we knew there would be plenty more of on the way to Osoyoos, our final destination for the day.  Our friends from the ferry, Nigel and Randy, had also made some suggestions on the route we should take coming back down and so we took their advice and weren’t let down at all.  Everywhere we went in Canada seemed to be just as beautiful, if not more so than where we’d come from.  We even saw lots of produce stands along the side of the road, something from the show Letterkenny that I didn’t realize was actually a thing.  “End of the laneway, don’t come up the property.”

As we snaked our way southeast we went over rivers, saw some more lakes, and general countryside that we’d normally had never been able to experience had it not been for this trip, so I was feeling pretty great about the entire experience.  Cutting along the small back roads, I was once again one with the bike and hauling ass through the twisties.  We wound up in Princeton where we stopped for some lunch before the last leg to Osoyoos and found a cool pub that served poutine so we got that as a side because you’re not going to NOT get poutine while in Canada.  Plus all the Tim Horton’s ads must have had it running through my subconscious.  They also had this weird sauce on all the tables – HP Sauce – which looked like a knock off A1.  We didn’t try it but you bet I got a photo so I’d remember it in the future.

Coming into Osoyoos reminded me a lot of dropping into Durango from the mountains but with some pretty big lakes.  It’s a beautiful, quaint town complete with the green vegetation and blue lakes with hills all around it.  Think back to the movie Joe Dirt when he first stumbles on Silvertown, it was a very similar feeling.

We got to the motel, got our trunks on, and headed out to the hot tub where we met a nice couple from somewhere in Alberta also on a bike trip.  They were fun to talk to because they referred to everything in kilometers and Celsius temperatures which was cool to sort of figure out the conversions on the fly.  They also said “eh” a lot too which was a neat stereotype to have experienced as an American.

Once our bellies started rumbling we took a long walk into town to grab some dinner where I had some local prime rib which was to die for.  There are also a lot of vineyards in this area too, so I tried a local wine and wasn’t let down.  When in Rome I guess!  We had to walk through a less pristine part of town to get to dinner where we also discovered the lovely ironic piece of graffiti you have already seen above…which I found pretty funny, and a likely true statement.

By the time we walked back to the motel we figured enough was enough, and rather than heading back down to the hot tub we instead watched the insides of our eyelids, dreaming of crossing back into the US tomorrow.