Waiting For A Train.

Celebrating Jim's birthday with a fantastic meal is starting to turn into a thing.  Last year it was Shanghai, this year it was at Muncho Lake BC.   Once again the weather cleared and we had a great morning riding down through the northern Canadian Rockies.  

Once the mountains receded and we approached Alberta things got boring.  But we did find possibly the greatest cinnamon buns ever baked at the Testa River Lodge.  Leaving Fort St. John it seemed appropriate to take a run out the Peace River Valley past the Site C damn site.  It is an an extremely beautiful valley and a real shame that it is destined to be 50M under water in the near future.  Seeing it was Canada Day (July 1), a stop at a Canadian institution was warranted  (in Chetwynd of all places).

It was at this point that the group got separated.  No big deal, we have technology and cell phone connections.  The thing is that when you are sending email messages and satellite communications texts it helps if the other parties notice the new message blinking red LED on their phones and satellite communicators.  None the less our path crossed at a gas station in Grande Prairie and we all headed off to Route 40 and Hinton for the night.  "Hinton?", you ask.  Well if you ever looked up the price of a hotel room in Jasper over a holiday long weekend in the summer you'd understand.  The finale of this trip was a classic - down the Columbia Icefields Parkway from Jasper down to Lake Louise then across Yoho National Park and Rogers Pass to Revelstoke.

Our timing as we pulled into the parking lot at the Spiral Tunnels was impeccable;  the screaming brakes of a train coming down the hill filled the valley.  We took up our viewing positions and waited for the train. 

And sure enough the front of the train made itself around the bend and headed into the tunnel.

And a little later thst same front of the train appeared a little lower down the mountain at the tunnel exit.  The rest of the train was still snaking around the bend and into the tunnel entrance above.

One of my favourite restaurants in the world is in Revelstoke, so not to leave anything to chance I had made reservations a few days before.  And of course in the intermediate time I had had the taste of the superb Woolsey Creek Bistro's bison back ribs on my tongue - thankfully they weren't sold out when we took our seats.  In fact they had enough for five of the six of us.  And trust a Californian to find a local wine that none of the locals had ever heard of before but now intent on finding more of.  Our last morning together on this ride found us at a French boulangerie staffed by Australians in a small town in BC; where in the winter cold arctic air meets warm pacific air sucked up the Columbia River and dumps a crap ton of snow every year.  But all that snow only explains why the Australian are here.

It was here the group separated once again, this time on purpose.  Those of us that headed south had a great uncluttered ride down through the Kootenays on down to Wenatchee.

Those that headed over the Coquihalla thinking they were on that fast track home quickly found all that last day of the long weekend traffic heading hone at the same time.

Anyways, it was a great 10-days or so ride around BC with a great bunch of guys who for the most part only met up about a year ago in Istanbul.   There's still a bunch of BC that might be there later but I'm not planning on chancing anything.