July 13th, 2015

What happened…

Andrew writes: The wind and rain kept us up again last night. Not in the way that you might think though. We had left a number of items out to dry, and when the wind picked up and it started to cloud over in the middle of the night, we lay inside the tent, silently hoping the other would go outside and pull everything in. This went on for about 20 minutes until I lost, and dashed outside in my PJs, dodging mosquitos and rain drops.

Waking up in the morning to the sliver of sunlight drilling a hole in my face, with the sound of a bumblebee droning away against the tent wall beside me was a rude awakening indeed. A quick glance at the clock showed that it was 0640hrs, way too early to be up. An hour of snuggle-time later, I rolled out of the tent and started on with morning chores.

I think that if there weren’t so many mosquitoes, we would spend an extra day at Rocky Point. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. We wrapped everything up and headed out for a day that would be up, up, up, followed by a thrilling descent into Vavenby. The climb wasn’t that hard, because we had mentally prepped ourselves for the 900m elevation gain. If anything, I thought that it was going to be steeper than it was, apparently only 6% instead of 10-12% that I would have normally expected on a logging road.

Yesterday being Sunday, there was very little logging traffic, but today we could hear it all around us, and we were passed several times by the large trucks carrying a miniature forest on their back. They spit up giant clouds of choking dust as they flew past. It was only momentary though, with the trucks gone, we got back to riding amidst the butterflies, dragonflies, horseflies, and bird-song.

When we finally did reach the top of the climb, approximately 39km into the day, I made the executive decision to camp out near the top of the descent, rather than arrive in a strange town, around dinner-time, with nowhere to stay. This way we can take our time tomorrow, go shopping, maybe sit and enjoy a coffee someplace, and then ride on towards Valemont and another wild camp.

The Skyline Lake Rec site is pretty basic. I was really surprised to find another couple here when we arrived, and they headed out onto the lake in kayaks to do some fishing. I must have looked pretty haggard, because I got a free beer from them before they departed. As we setup our camp, and cooked dinner, and did all of our nightly things, we were forced to put on our “bug suits”, to get a little bit of respite from the mosquitoes. Strangely enough, I think that if we had been here a week earlier, during the heat wave, that we would be fine, but as it is, it’s rained the last few nights and now the bugs are out in force. Ahhh well, they won’t kill me…or will they??? Tune in tomorrow!

Amanda writes:
Today was more uphill and then some more uphill. I’ve about had it with the forest service roads (FSR). I’m glad for the small amount of traffic but my arms and shoulders are in considerable pain. I certainly realize that I should pay more attention to my shoulder injury and do some exercises. I know from my working life that taking rests and stretching are crucial. My right shoulder actually prevented me from working for a week while still at my office job. This was followed by an ergonomic assessment and desk adjustment and a switch from right handed mouse use on the computer to left hand mouse use. By making this change I was able to get the feeling back in my right arm. Over the year of exercises and stretching and changing the domination of right hand use, I lost considerable strength in my right arm. I’ve never regained the strength and I feel it on days like today. I must make a point of making time for the exercises before I loose all feeling again. No more FSR’s!

Today’s Photographs

[flickr_tags user_id=”17145280@N00″ tags=”071315″]