If you have kids, take them on trips. They will remember them forever. I remember the trips my family took when I was a kid quite clearly. We’d load up into the station wagon pulling a camper and slowly make our way out west, mostly for summer hockey schools at places like Sylvan Lake and Penticton.

I still have vivid memories of these experiences. I remember camping in Radium at the campground down in the valley with the two giant hoodoos on the side of the hill (the motel I stayed at on day one of this tour sits on the side of the mountain above this campground). I remember waiting for the Kootenay Bay- Balfour Ferry on our way to Nelson to see my dad’s cousins. I remember Penticton very well- mostly the beach, the rink where our hockey school was, and the woman from the orchard who drove through the campground every day selling freshly made peach pies. I remember my great aunt’s house in Kamloops and my other great aunt’s house in Nelson.

On one of these trips we went to Hell’s Gate in the Fraser Canyon. I was maybe 11 at the time.  My memories of this experience are so vivid that I can almost recreate the entire afternoon in my mind, right down to specific conversations I had with my parents or looking down at the swirling and churning river on the bridge high above. I remember that we walked down the canyon wall on a winding trail, but it was far too steep to walk back up so we took the tram up. I remember my dad explaining what the fish ladders are and why they were important for salmon migration. That year in school I did a report on salmon and was able to use my experience at Hell’s Gate and the fish ladders to give some extra flourish to my report (including pictures).

Memories like this have an impact on my tours. The mountains give me that “first baseball game and hot dog” feeling that American kids get. I get all excited and nostalgic and all is right with the world. Then there are special areas within the mountains that do that…ones that correlate to specific memories…like the Fraser Canyon and Hell’s Gate… which is why I chose that route to get from the Lower Mainland to the Okanagan.

I left Scott & Gill’s place in Port Moody by 8:00, and made a quick stop to fuel up before hitting the Trans Canada west to Hope. Fast highways with heavy traffic are not fun, which is why I tend to avoid the Trans Canada if I can on my tours. The ride between Hope and Greater Vancouver is particularly bad and the morning sun was almost blinding. I just put on some good tunes and rolled with it. By 9:30 I was in Hope.

The ride north of Hope takes you from the open Fraser Valley into a tight mountain range. It gets so tight that the only place they could put a road is to perch it along the mountainside, so you have a rock wall on one side, and a cliff that drops down into the river on the other.   Some places are way too steep and so they got the dynamite out and blasted tunnels through the mountain. The scenery is amazing but you have to pull over to enjoy it because you have to pay attention to traffic and the road.

I had a good vibe going on the bike so when I reached Hell’s Gate I just kept on riding. I’ve been down the tram several times in the past few years and didn’t feel the need to see it again. Sometimes you just have to keep the ride going, and Midnight is so comfortable that stopping to take breaks is unnecessary. For 90+ km I rode up that canyon, and I only stopped once to take a few pictures.

At Lytton my route turned to the northeast and followed the Thompson River to Spences Bridge. That little stretch of road is not as lush and green as thick as the Fraser Canyon- it is part of the dry, sparsely treed Thompson Plateau- but it is pleasant in its own right and includes some very cool sections of road right up against the massive Thompson River.

At Spences Bridge I left Hwy #1 and headed east toward Merritt. This is a little-known road but you really can’t say that you’ve ridden BC if you haven’t taken it a few times. It follows the Nicola River almost the entire way to Merritt, and it gets pretty twisty on the western half.

By the time I reached Merritt it was about 1:30 pm and there were dark clouds to the east over the Okanagan Connector. I was dreading this ride. It’s another fast road with heavy traffic and a very high elevation. I encountered rain at the summit, but nothing I couldn’t handle and it started to dissipate as I starting the descent into the Okanagan Valley.

I reached Kelowna by 4pm after enduring the horrific traffic of West Kelowna. The ride in from the west is just awful. There’s no other way to put it. There is way too much traffic, too many lights, and it’s generally just a shitshow. It’s so bad it makes me want to cut Kelowna out of my tours.

I spent the evening walking along the beach. It was not particularly warm out for Kelowna- maybe 21- and it looked like it was going to rain at any minute. Today was really kind of a bridge day. The only reason I chose to stay in Kelowna was so that I would be within easy striking distance of Penticton. Tomorrow afternoon a very unusual suspect on my tours would be landing at the airport.

Here’s a map of the day: