6/7/09 Still part of Segment 11. Armstrong to Sicamous. 35 miles
As I’m sitting here in my “Hille” with the weather looking a bit ominous outside, Ryan is in his “Hotel Hilleberg” cooking some mac and cheese in the vestibule. To start with, these tents are full on, the best tents in the world. Don’t give me any flack about North Face or Mountain Hardware – Bush League compared to a Hilleberg. Check out their website and you’ll see why: internal living space with a pre-connected fly. The inner living space literally hangs inside the fly. We have two enormous vestibules, either both for gear, or one for cooking if the weather is foul. This model even has zippered downward flaring vents in both vestibules. I wouldn’t have had any other tent for a trip of this length. I mean it’s literally your home away from home. And we both feel that you just have to enjoy a little comfort for something that lasts a summer to do. Put us both in one tent………and I think all hell would break loose after only a week. That’s why we are each carrying one of these 7-pound beauties. It’s well worth lugging them up over mountain passes!
Ok, so I rambled a bit there. We ran another easy day so as not to aggravate Ryan’s ITB. One more easy day to Revelstoke, and we’re going to start climbing up into the heart of the Canadian Rockies. The stuff you see all the pictures of. Today was on, and then over in a blick of an eye so to speak. We did 35 miles in about 2.5 hrs. And we both feel as though we did NOTHING! But our options were few as there’s really nothing between Sicamous and Revelstoke that has any camping options. We pulled into the town at about 12 pm, with just way too much time on our hands.
The ride today was pretty easy, and we had a very nice little tailwind for a change. You could really feel the landscape and temps changing as we left the last vestiges of the arid Okanagan Valley area in Vernon and Armstrong, for the more heavily forested region we’re in right now. The cascading mountain streams were now reappearing on the sides of the road, indicating melting snow up in the high country. Couple that with our first glimpses of the high, snowcapped mts in the distiance, and we knew we were entering a different ecozone, and that we’d be much closer to starting those climbs that we’ve been thinking about for nearly a year – Rogers Pass and Kicking Horse Pass.
After a couple of moderate, low angle climbs, and a couple of smallish power climbs, we pulled up alongside Shuswap Lake once we entered the outskirts of Sicamous. Now this is no whimpy little lake. This thing is enourmous. I mean it resembles a large and grossly contorted letter H, with each arm stretching for about 40-60 miles. It is as picturesque as you could imagine what with the mountains on all sides of it, and the boats flittering across its emerald blue waters. It’s no wonder that this town is called the “Houseboat Capital of Canada”. The lake is reminiscent of Lake Powell with all its arms and channels. The Canadians rent these giant house boats out here and just churn around this massive lake for vacations. You can find in places, 20-30 of these huge rental boats, 2-3 decks high, parked like rental cars at a marina. People chug in and out of the channel in Sicamous in a constant and never-ending parade of these massive houseboats. Not my thing, but you could have a great time kayaking along the hundreds of miles of wilderness shoreline up here in Shuswap Lake.
I tooled around town by foot and checked out the marina, the boat rental places, and went to a very beautiful day park along the shore of the lake. There were plenty of people out there catching rays despite the rather gnarly looking weather to the south. I got back to the camping area and did a good bit of work on my client’s training regimes, skyping clients and loved ones, and then downloading pics to the blog. It’s rather interesting up here, as almost EVERY private campground has wireless internet available. It’s expected from what some people tell me. So we’re having a very easy time communicating with everyone, in addition to doing our jobs while on the road. Heck as I’m working on this travelogue I have internet in my tent – some 100 meters from the camp office!
Well, Ryan exited Hotel Hilleberg, and went to the local Sicamous sports pub to watch the Lakers game. I’d join him, but I just end up spending WAY too much money in these places, what with ordering dinner and a few beers, it ends up costing nearly 50 bucks. So thankfully the Cavs lost, and I don’t have to go sit in a sports pub any more. I’m done there and have spent enough on that. I’ll likely go to the Subway down the way about 10 min, buy a couple subs – they have the foot long for 6 bucks deal up here in Canada. I’ll bring them back, sit on a picnic table overlooking the Eagle River and eat my dinner. Maybe even get a little bottle of red wine and listen to the Sunday edition of CBC radio.
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