I started packing for our Summer Tour last week, and felt like I was packed and ready to go last Thursday. Nevertheless, there was still some last minute shopping and packing. I bought a handlebar bag to hold my camera, and also a lightweight rain jacket since the forecast was calling for rain. But wait, maybe I should start at the beginning…
When my Dad died, I inherited his spot in a friends football pool. Every year we all get together before the season starts and pick the teams that we think will be the best. I seem to have inherited my Dads football smarts too because I finished pretty poorly last year. Anyhow, the big get together this year is in Vernon. Amanda and I decided to take the bikes out for a spin in order to get there.
Vernon isn’t that far from Vancouver, as the crow flies. There are a few ways to get there too. Rather than the the most direct route on a very busy Coquihalla Highway, we’ve decided to come at it in an arc from the west.
We had considered taking an eastward arc along Hwy 3, but a recent road trip we took changed our minds. The highway is busy, the shoulder poor, and the climbs STEEP!
Our ride starts on the Sea to Sky (Hwy 99) Highway between Vancouver and Pemberton. We will stop in Squamish and Whistler the first two nights, then north of Pemberton in Joffre Lakes, Lilooet, Juniper Beach Park, swing North around Kamloops and then figure out a way to get east to Shuswap Lake and finally south to Vernon via Sorrento and Salmon Arm.
View Summer Tour 2013 in a larger map
The trip should end up being 700km, with 9 days of riding and a rest day to ride the Whistler Bike Park. We’ll rendezvous with friends along the way, and hopefully make some new friends too!
Back to packing…Our bags probably weigh in the realm of 25kg for each of us. It occurred to me that if we had packed our laptop, and a change of warm clothes (and pyjamas it turns out), that we could have turned this 10 day tour into a 10 year journey. Strange how the minimums for a bike trip stay the same. Everything else is just luxury items. We tried to make it work with 6 panniers between us, but needed to add 1 more to make everything fit. Cant ride with an odd number of bags, so we had LOTS of room for extra stuff.
The ride today was something I’ve done before, but it was new to Amanda. We rode from our home in North Vancouver to a friends backyard in Squamish. 80km, about 4h30m of riding, and 6 hours in the saddle. All told today, we spent $23. More on our budget later in the trip. This is getting long so I’ll post some pictures now.
Cheers!
Andrew
Looking out on the Georgia Strait.
Just past Horseshoe Bay..
Heading towards our first of two big climbs – Furry Creek.
Taken just before our big climb up the hill.
Arriving in Squamish. Garibaldi in the background and Stawamus Chief on the right.
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