Summerland, B.C. - Princeton, B.C.

Today I cycled from Summerland to Princeton.

This morning I delayed starting as there was a slight drizzle when I woke up.  I hit the road at 8:00, not willing to wait any longer, but fortunately the rain stopped within minutes of beginning my ride.

I made good time heading south on Highway 97, backtracking the ten or so kilometres along Lake Okanagan that I had biked yesterday.

The Summerland Motel did not serve breakfast, so I stopped at Tim Horton's in Penticton and filled my panier with some food.

From there, rather than continue on the highway, I took the more relaxed route through downtown Penticton again before joining Highway 97 on the south side by the airport.

Penticton is bounded on the north by Lake Okanagan and to the south by Lake Saha.  The highway runs along the western bank of Lake Saha as well, and begins to climb up to the junction where 97 meets 3A.  At this point I was about 25 kilometres from Summerland and I was still making good time.

Highway 3A West leaves the Okanagan Valley and crosses a range of mountains before descending into the Similkameen Valley.  Almost as soon as I joined 3A I began climbing at what is for a highway an extremely steep grade.  

It was also an extremely desolate stretch, which was nice, because I would much rather be struggling over a mountain pass without having to worry about traffic.

Once again I enjoyed the climb more than I expected.  It felt awfully good to summit it and then, the real highlight, flying down the other side into the valley.  My speedometer topped out at over 60 kmph.

It was still before noon by the time I reached the village of Keremeos, where Highway 3A meets Highway 3.  I took a little shortcut around the village, past apple orchards, and met Highway 3 on the west side of the village.

After Keremeos it is about 65 kilometres to Princeton, and its more or less a false flat the whole way.  I think the total climb is only 250 metres, but there was some wind in my face as well, so it felt like a real slog.  

The old mining town of Hedley broke up the stretch a bit.

Apparently you can take tours of old gold mines around here, and the whole place felt like a bit of an historic relic.

Past Hedley the highway crosses the Similkameen River and then runs alongside it the rest of the way into Princeton.

I got to spend more time than I would have liked along the gorgeous river, because about ten kilometres out of Princeton I had to change a flat.

If there can be such a thing as ideal timing for a flat, this was it.  The weather was perfect, the view lovely, and I was close enough to the end of my day that I did not feel demoralized.  

I took my time getting the flat fixed, and got back on the road around 15:30.  I rolled into Princeton at around 16:00.  So including just under two hours of stops, it was an eight hour day of cycling to cover 125 kilometres, with an average speed of 20.7 kmph.  Certainly beat yesterday, but I was still disappointed it was so low.  

I made my first stop in Princeton at A&W for "lunch."  Here I met another cyclist, also working his way towards Vancouver, who had cycled from Keremeos today.  He had at least two, probably three decades on me, so I was embarrassed to tell him I was staying a motel while he was tenting!  We chatted casually about the next stretch, and he intimidated me a bit with how hard he made it sound.  

After lunch we wished each other luck and I cycled to the Deerview Motel to check in to my room.  I had laughed at the corniness of the name "Deerview," but I saw deer three separate times at the motel or close to it!  This was the most surprising sight, a whole bunch of deer right in the middle of the town!

The cyclist I met had mentioned he had stopped in at the tourist office to get information about the tomorrow's ride, so I headed over there as well to see what I could learn.  I was a bit taken aback when the lady said "there's no way you can make it to Hope in one day."  This was exactly what I intended to do, so now I was worried.  She gave me this little piece of paper to give me a sense of the climb:

Now I was intimidated and stressed, but probably more determined than ever that I would in fact make it to Hope tomorrow.