Hello all,
In case any of you noticed the brief disappearance/ reappearance of some of our posts, that was the result of Blogger temporarily going down - the problem seems to be resolved now though, so hurrah!
Today was definitely not one of my favorite days...we only did 85km today, but it was definitely and our hardest day yet. The entire trip seemed to be straight up hill, and every corner we came to we thought we must certainly be at the top of the hill - only to turn the corner and see that we were wrong, and the hill in fact continued. Massive climbs aside, it was a pretty solid day. We left the motel we stayed at by about 9, and both felt pretty good in terms of soreness/ muscle fatigue. The most eventful part of the morning was probably when I got sunscreen in my eyes, and made Chris stop so I could wipe my eyes in order to stop the tears and once more see where we were going. I picked a good spot to stop, as we were right beside a field of cows - naturally, we took a picture:
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| Cows and some mountains |
We chugged a long, going up and down hills pretty much constantly, and really didn't do or see too much of interest. We stopped to eat/drink/ apply sunscreen, but for the most part the day consisted of keeping our morale up, and taking it easy as we knew that it was going to be a consistently difficult ride. At the top of one of the (many) hills we rode up, we got our first glimpse of Lake Kamloops - we were still quite far from the city of Kamloops, but it was encouraging to finally reach the lake that we would be riding along side for the rest of the day.
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| Lake Kamloops again at a lookout point |
We got rained on for a little while, but nothing worth stopping for, and the rain was actually quite refreshing as we were in the midst of (yet another) rather large climb. We saw a couple bike tourists coming the other way, and they waved and yelled hello which made us a little happier, but for the most part the day was spent wishing for evening to come. My face is still quite sunburned and Chris is starting to get a little pink too, so we took many sunscreen breaks along the way. I'm not sure why Chris felt so inclined to take a picture of one said sunscreen breaks, but here it is :)
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| Sunscreen break |
The last 20km before Kamloops were by far the worst 20km yet. We were both getting tired by this point, and these last 20k were all up a fairly steep incline - definitely the biggest hill we had to face. Its good practice though, since we're steadily approaching the rockies and roger's pass (only a few days away!). We will definitely be glad once the prairies begin. By the time we got to Kamloops, neither of us wanted to move let alone bike any farther. We found an information center, and they showed us the closest few campsites - one was 10k away, one 20k, and one 25k away! We kind of looked at each other, and mutually agreed that we would wimp out again and opt for a motel, so we called around and found a place less than a kilometer away with fantastically low rates.
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| Shot of the giant fish overlooking Kamloops in the information center parking lot. |
We settled our bike and trailer into the room for the night, and went to East Side Mario's for a much deserved, massive meal. We took advantage of the unlimited bread, soup, and salad, and both finished everything on our plates - for $20, we definitely got our money's worth. After dinner, we headed back to the room, showered, and were in bed by 9:00pm. A true sign of how tired we both were. The day was uneventful but rough, and definitely a character builder. Chris and I have yet to really fight though, which is a result of a great deal of patience on both parts - we'll see what happens in the next few days, when it starts getting really tough. After all, its only been 5 days - but it feels like a month.
That's all for now, tomorrow is only going to be a short day - after the day we've had, we decided it would be best to give our bodies a break and take a day off. We are going to bike the 25km towards the campsite we were pointed towards, and take the opportunity to relax and rest our aching muscles.
Thanks for tuning in!
Patricia and Chris
