June 9 - Gray Creek to Moyie Lake

Bike log: 156km, 1238m of vertical, average speed 25.2 km/h

It felt good to get a good day in after a couple of shorter rides. The weather was pretty good for most of the day, although there was still that darn headwind for a lot of it. There was no rain until the last hour or so, at which point it absolutely poured. At one point there was lightning and at another point there was hail!

Finally pulled into the campground, soaked and immediately started to get chilled off (while riding getting cold is not usually a problem). The campground was mostly vacant, but it took a while to find a site anyway because most of the sites are marked for 1 night only, and we wanted to have a rest day tomorrow. Finally we got in one, and by that point I was cold enough that I just piled into the van, pulled off the wet clothes and left the van running while I sat in front of the rear heater and cracked a beer! Unlike just about every Volkswagen I've ever been in, the van has an incredibly effective heating system.

The ride down the east side of Kootenay Lake was one of the most scenic parts of the trip so far. There is not much traffic along that 60 km stretch north of Creston- apparently only 1500 people live in that distance. The road follows the lake most of the way, and there are large mountains on both sides. At that point it was also not raining, which has been rare lately, which I'm sure helped to enhance the experience.

We are into a new time zone - Mountain time! I gave a little cheer as we passed the sign that indicated the change. It started raining about 3 minutes later, I will not cheer when we pass the next one (the Saskatchewan/Manitobar border, I believe).

At one point while Cheryl was pulled off the road waiting for me near Yahk, a local farmer approached her - I guess he thought she was going to hop over his barbed wire fence. He was very friendly and helpful, although downright pessimistic about the prospect of biking through Alberta. What with the 120 km/h hurricane force winds, nasty truckers, and constant floods (not to mention the metres of snow) it sounds nealry impossible! Well, good thing Alberta is quite narrow where we cross, and hopefully that hurricane will be a tailwind.