Bikely map

I woke up at around 4:30am, figuring that I mist be in Mountain time already, and it must therefore be 5:30am already. It was cold enough, and I was trying to reach Lethbridge late enough on Monday (or any time on Tuesday) that I decided to catch a little extra sleep (my paper record keeps saying that I have a short enough day ahead, but then I keep overshooting my distance estimate and making it wrong, so I’ve changed the wording here).

So I woke back up at 7:45am instead, and by this point was feeling kinda hot instead (I’d been sleeping with my bag flipped to 0C instead of 10C because the temperatures I was getting were closer to that; I didn’t record it, but I think that this was the last night I did that). Just for the record, I woke up to pretty much the following scenery (not so visible in the night shots of my bags over the sign):

After getting going, I pulled into Yahk, but not before passing a false-alarm on my lookout for a “change your clock” sign:

I picked up some water in Yahk, which I was told was safe, but really loaded with iron (which I’d believe, since I could smell the iron in it). Fortunately, I didn’t have to drink it before I got to another town (Moyie) with somewhat more palatable water to do another refill at.

Regrettably, Yahk was also right near a change in district for road maintenance contracts. I’d read on a BC randonneur page describing the Crowsnest 1000 (is 1000km a brevet or a randonnee?) that the rumble strips get stupid around there. For the most part the page is right; the strips are close to half the width of the paved shoulder, well into the shoulder (often with loose gravel or really worn down pavement on the non-road side), and prone to weaving. Observe:

Though the scenery continued to be nice:

And then finally, about 25km into the day (so by 5 miles, the folks in Creston clearly meant 25 miles–people in cars have no real appreciation for distance, I think because they don’t pay for it with sweat off their brow–I saw a sign telling me to change my clock

I continued towards Moyie, and discovered that in the Rocky Mountain Forest District, there isn’t as much concern paid to keeping clearcuts one ridge away from the highway so that the tourists can’t see them. Maybe tourists around there are expected to come from Alberta and not matter as much.

Just look at that last one, it looks like they not only don’t care about whether it’s an eyesore for visitors, but also don’t care if a stray log comes crashing through some visitor’s cottage. That sort of shamelessness in their behaviour is actually refreshingly honest.

This was also the day when I first caught a glimpse of the Rocky Mountains (as opposed to the Coastal Mountains, the Cascade Mountains, the Columbia Mountains, or the Kootenay Mountains). Note an important difference between the appearance of the Rockies and all the other mountain ranges. The Rockies actually look rocky:

In fact, they look rather a lot like a giant, impenetrable wall of rock, thousands of feet high, standing between me and the prairies. I spent a good lot of time being very thankful that someone had come long before me and found a pass through them, because they really don’t look like much fun to go over.

Anyhow, I had planned to stop about 10-15km shy of Cranbrook (just close enough to get cell signal, not close enough to have difficulty finding a place to camp), but got to that point at around 4pm, and couldn’t think of what else to do with the rest of my day other than ride the rest of the way into Cranbrook and see if I could use some of the services that I would have otherwise used the next day.

Cranbrook struck me as pretty lousy when I pulled into it; a lot of the development seemed to be car-based strip-mall type businesses on the side of the highway, the old downtown was about 2 blocks, and largely useless (and not even useless in that pretty gentrified sort of way; more like a block of old downtown businesses had been razed to make room for a 3 storey low-rise insurance company office). The municipal services seemd to be pretty adequate, but it did cost me $3 to grab a shower at the public pool, and the library closed down for the entire long weekend (and was the only place to score an internet terminal).

After showering, I looked for somewhere suitably out-of-the-way where I could pitch my tent, but got a vibe off the town that someone would come by and try to vandalize my bike, pick a fight, or other such nastiness, so I pulled into the campground/trailer park instead. It cost me $20 for an unserviced tent site. On top of that, the patch of level ground that they’d prepared was filled/levelled with limestone sheeting so a stake couldn’t reasonably be driven into it without risking damage to the stake (I now have a bent stake for the tent, just so you know). I pitched my tent on plain earth (somewhat sloping) next to the tent area and, lacking a branch to hang my food from, just stashed the food bags under my picnic table.

In other delightful news, while I was phoning home, I saw someone run away, and then a cop run after him. I then noticed that there was an RCMP truck that said cop had sprung from. The fellow’s (now ex) girlfriend started chatting me up about how this had caught her by surprise, and she was kinda pissed off that the guy had a secret like this. Further conversation with other campers about the guy’s recent behaviour led me to believe that he was a thief who had recently pulled off a substantial heist.

Needless to say, while I wouldn’t say the $20 were well spent, I don’t feel particularly bad about my decision not to try camping out in some vacant lot or somesuch. After all, buddy might have passed by while fleeing the cops, seen my bike, figured it would give him a speed boost, and then I’d have had a hell of a time continuing the ride (“No sir, we need to keep your bicycle as evidence”).

Also, I finished my first 1000km on the way into Cranbrook.