Today has been a truly remarkable day. First and foremost we have seen 9 (!) bears. Two mother bears with two and three cubs, respectively. They were both about 50-100 m away from the road and we could stop, watch them and take pictures. Next, we saw two lone bears, which were just next to the road in the bushes (ca. 4 m away from us when we passed them by bike) and they either ran away or just watched us pass. We weren’t fast enough to catch the two last encounters on picture, though. All bears we’ve seen today were black bears. In this region there happen to live grizzly bears, too. The difficulty is to tell them apart, as the color does by far not suffice as indicator. Try it yourself! Second, we have also seen a mother moose with her calf. For once, the road signs were correct. All animal encounters have just happened within three hours during the morning. Third, we have hit our 5000 km milestone today. Fourth, we are now exactly three months travelling – from the beginning of spring to the longest day – so we have spent one third of our travelling time on the Panamericana. Fifth, we just cycled one of our most strenuous daily legs with 143 km and 1351 m altitude gain in 6:31 h (and ate 600 g of pasta for dinner). After such a day, what could be better than a refreshing swim in a scenic and calm lake? We hope for many days alike to come and feel “beary” lucky!
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Not many words seem to fit for this blog entry. It is best if you just have a look at all the pictures we have taken trying to capture some of this astonishing natural beauty.
While cycling the Icefields Parkway from Lake Louise to Jasper the landscape resembled winter wonderland: it was gently snowing and we could take our first Christmas-Card pictures with flowers and pine trees covered with a thin layer of snow, like icing sugar :-). During the downhill passages, the icy wind was biting our faces, hands and feet, but generally, snow is much easier to bear on the bike than rain. Numerous RVs and tourist cars passed us, some cheered at us and kept us going. Additionally, we met some fellow touring cyclists along the route. At all major tourist sights (especially the overcrowded Icefields Centre), though, we were less happy having to share it with a seemingly never-ending number of tour operator busses and group tourists. While it was cold in the heights and during the night, it could also get hot again during the day. On our short hike near Jasper on the Valley of the Five Lakes Loop and in Mount Robson Park, we were very glad having enough sunscreen and short clothes. We are now enjoying some summer days in the Robson Valley, continuing our route to Prince George and Smithers, where we will do a volunteering stay for about a week. This is the official slogan for marketing B.C.'s natural heritage to tourism. And we agree with that! While cycling through B.C. from West to East during the last week, we have experienced quite a few happenings, which we would like to share with you in retrospective. Summer Who would have thought, that summer temperatures are going to hit us right in the mountains in B.C.? For five consecutive days we enjoyed (or endured, this could change quite quickly!) over 35 °C in the shadow. Luckily, we often had campgrounds situated directly on a river or lake, so we could jump into the water right after a day of cycling and cool down. High season Beginning of June also marks the beginning of high season for tourism in Canada; not necessarily only for foreigners, but also Canadians themselves. For the first time, we needed to "fight" for our campsite: prices are equally high per site whether you arrive by RV as a family and with two extra vehicles or on two bikes and with a tent. There is no such convenient thing anymore as "hike & bike" campsite, where you also enjoy priority. Especially on the weekends we now have to plan our legs strategically wise. Or we opt for wild camping (which is perfectly allowed, if we do not stay on private ground or in national parks); so far we were rewarded with the most beautiful spots while doing so. The only tricky point to keep in mind is the vicinity to water. We use the DrinkPure waterfilter if we need instant drinking water or for large volumes Micropure tablets.
Highways Sea to Sky Highway, Trans Canada Highway... The names are very depicting and hold their promises! Our most scenic route led us from Whistler to Lillooet on the Duffey Lake Road (thank you, Blake& Nina, for this advice!). We felt like cycling through a travel brochure for Canada! Everything was included: wide forests, snowy mountains, deep blue lakes... just the page with the steep, winding roads someone had accidentally torn out ;-)! On our way to the Rocky Mountains we logically now are passing through mountainous areas, which adds altitude to our legs (and trains our muscles even more for the coming). Cycling on the Trans Canada Highway 1 although is much less frightening than it sounds. First of all, we have had a wide and clear shoulder mostly (which you don't have on smaller streets, so the cars are passing you much closer). Second, the trucks drive very carefully usually leaving a safety corridor for us. Third, we are highly visible wearing bright colours and a flashing red backlight (which doesn't seem to be the norm, as we already have received positive comment from drivers at a traffic light regarding this). And fourth, we are having funny encounters on highways as well! There are the proud Harley drivers and also the ubiquitous RV lovers: usually we leave the campgrounds between 8 and 9 o'clock in the morning while the rest of the guests is having breakfast and usually our RV neighbours cross us on the road two to three hours later, waving, honking and blinking" good bye" to us :-). The peaks Not only physically are we reaching peaks, but also in figures. We have hit the milestone of 4000 km cycled, endured temperatures of 44.5 °C, climbed uphill for 1437 m in one day and raced downhill with a speed of 69 km/h. All in all, we are feeling like "flying high" these days and we are eager to discover Alberta's natural jewels soon.
We are now getting into more remote areas and finding internet connection and power plugs is getting more challenging (as also the number of Starbucks coffees and chains alike are decreasing:-)). However, we have now discovered, that also remote smaller places usually do have a library, which is open to the public. So we are finally able to fill you in on our experience with Vancouver We entered the city from southeast, coming from Langley, and we were astonished that we could follow a bike path practically for the entire leg. The BC park bike path simply follows the SkyTrain line and led us right into the center of downtown Vancouver. From there it was only a few minutes to our hotel at Burrard Street. We had decided to book a well situated and slightly upscale hotel for two days in order to profit the most of our time in the city. It paid off well, we could reach all sights by foot and enjoyed ourselves very much! There were even gummy bears as a welcome gift and a Nespresso coffee machine for real espresso - we both felt very pampered. What we liked most about Vancouver was the fact, that the city was very welcoming and there were plenty of public spaces beautifully arranged, just inviting its citizens to spend some time there. At Canada Place and Coal Harbor at the waterfront, we spent an entire morning after a delicious breakfast with crêpes. Then we walked through the Gastown neighborhood where we also visited the steam clock. In Yaletown we enjoyed a massage, that we had received as a gift from Nora and Marco to reward ourselves for the first half of our cycling tour mastered :-). Entirely relaxed we walked over the Burrard bridge to Granville Island to enjoy the fresh market and artistic boutiques along the marina. To round off our sight-seeing tour we hopped into a watertaxi and let us ship back to Yaletown waterfront - a very cosy way to enjoy Vancouver's skyline. On our way out of town towards Horse Shoe Bay by bike again, we cycled through Stanley Park and visited the Totem poles. It was interesting to learn what totem poles exactly are (= story tellers) and we are looking forward to seeing more of these travelling through B.C. and Yukon in First Nation Territories. From Stanley Park we also had a fantastic view back to Vancouver and waved good-bye. So far, this was the city we enjoyed the most and could even imagine living here (no plans are made though, we still intend coming back to Switzerland at the end of this year!). Now we are up for the Mountains on our way to Banff National Park.
We were very lucky with our journey on the ferry from Swartz Bay (Vancouver Island) to Tsawwassen (Vancouver): the sun was shining and made the scenic route through various small islands even more beautiful. When arriving on the mainland, Thomas was waiting for us us right after the ferry terminal with his bike and together we cycled along Mud Bay Reserve and through pleasant farmland and communal parks to their home in Langley, southeast of Vancouver. Rita and Thomas – whom we had met at the beginning of our journey in Big Sur, California – welcomed us for three nights and made us feel at home away from home. We enjoyed their great and fun company and had a few relaxing days where we could wash our clothes, re-furbish our gear, enjoy the kitchen and simply plan our trip ahead in Canada – it was a bliss. Thank you very much again! Before heading for our cycling adventure in Canada, we will discover Vancouver Downtown for two days.
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Blog Archive
September 2016
CountersKilometers pedalled
Hours on the bike
Meters cycled uphill
Flat tires
Burgers eaten
Bears sighted
Day by day statisticsFor those interested in our day by day activities and statistics, please download the following document.
World Clock
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