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previous 26-07-04 | calendar | 10-08-04 nextAs I sat up to look outside, kapow! It was like someone had flicked a switch and turned on the brightest light in the solar system. I was squinting into the face of the sun, the morning's direction beacon for my journey. Dawning across the same landscape it had set on, the Nl’Akapxm Eagle Motorplex campground and environs, it was still as desolate a place as before - and remained a welcome refuge from the road (see previous journal entry for the 18th of July for the same start point at Ashcroft).
Adding to a list of 'Local fauna I would otherwise not get to see' aka: road kill, I saw the fresh remains of a local valley's namesake. Unfortunate for the coyote, but a boon for the crows. Coyotes and fragrant sage brush in desert lands, classic. But with the desert can be changed and be brought to living green by intense irrigation. Sparse ankle-high vegetation to one side of the road, the world's largest ginseng farm cosseted by shade cloth and water on the other.
Skipping oatmeal soaked in heavily mineralised water as a breakfast option for dried fruit instead, I was regretting it within 50km as I stopped for a break. If I have to check my brakes (as I did after my first 200m) or oil my chain (I tended to that earlier) then it's my energy levels slowing me down. In Savona I stopped by the side of the road to snack in the only shade and lawn around, the entrance to a natural gas pumping station. Further on I stopped for more fuel. The clerk remarked I'd bought so little for the "big hill" just up the road.
Taking it steadily with my legs spinning in an easy gear, the vista across Kamloops Lake broadened as the road climbed higher. At the top I could see most of the other arm of the long, clear lake but was more interested in studying the road ahead: a bit more of the same.
What was a welcome surprise and totally unexpected was the chance meeting of another cycle tourer, Morhgan. In the last five years touring he has zigzagged his way across Canada and was currently cycling south from Inuvik, a town just above the Canadian Arctic Circle, to Victoria, a city at the southern tip of Vancouver Island. Like Gilles (another cycle tourist I met on the road) yesterday, he was pleased to point out places of interest along the route across Canada that I had chosen. He was also a fount of information like: How to camp to avoid bears. The last place I had to worry about camping with bears was when they way outnumbered people and we had to have someone on watch with a gun nearby for polar bears as we were camped in the High Arctic, less than 1,300km from the North Pole. In Canada the tip is to live clean keeping food scraps, food and cooking way away from the tent and preferably have the swag hung up a tree. Much more liveable (and my only weapon is a tent peg).
Waving each other goodbye and safe travels, I continued on to Kamloops which had announced itself with a bicycle path bypassing the motorway. These bike path signs soon ran out when the need to have bicycle traffic seperate from the highway also ended.
The sky above Kamloops looked like it would soon unleash a thunderstorm that had been brewing throughout the afternoon and was trapped above the lake. Seeking shelter in a band shell I didn't have to wait long for the sound and lightshow to begin.
After the rain had abated I looked around for a place to stay for two nights, my first scheduled rest day. At a campground on the north side of the Thompson River near the centre of Kamloops I found one for $18 a night. Joking about bears I was told that there were many of them this time last year when the forest fires burned the surrounding hills forcing wildlife to seek refuge in town. "There were bears in the streets for weeks", she said. No chance of them now I laughed. "No. It'll be a few weeks before they're back for the salmon."