Journey Notes

After a great sleep in Lytton, I managed to get away at a more respectable 8:45am. The sun was already pretty warm so I dressed in lighter clothing, leaving the rain gear behind. The Thompson River is amazing to ride along. While the Fraser Cannon had some spectactular heights, you often could not actually see the river, it was so far down steep clifts. For most of today's travels, the Thompson was very close. You could hear it rushing in the opposite direction to my travel for much of the day.

The hills were not so bad today but there was constant up and down the whole way. Luckily, I had a great tail wind most of the way. About half way to Cache Creek I passed a large burnt section of road. It must have been a fiery accident. About 100m up the road, my rear wheel started to wobble and I could feel the rim running on the road. I must have run over some bit of melted metal that embedded itself in the wheel. It turned out to be a nice bit of wire. As I was fixing the tire, Rochelle caught up to me and stopped to keep me company as I fixed the flat. That end up being a good place for lunch.

Just before lunch, I came across two big horned sheep grazing beside the road. They did not seem to be spooked by the cars and trucks going by, but they did seem to be spooked by me. One of them jumped a 1.5 meter fence with what seemed to be no effort at all. It almost looked like it floated over.

Today was a bit difficult coordinating our activities. We have no paper maps and did not have any internet access. I had a good sense of our route so I set a meeting point near Ashcroft but we missed each other. I waited a while in Ashcroft but Rochelle was using that time well, getting us a nice camp spot east of Cache Creek. I road the rest of the way around 5pm. It was a long 97km day. I was tired at the end of it, having now covered 372km in 4 days but I have recovered pretty well and hope to get to Kamloops tomorrow, another 82km to the east.