Bikely map

Not yet having seen that the Cranbrook Library was closed for the entire weekend, I figured on getting a slightly later start to the day, in order to cut back on the need to otherwise amuse myself in town. Consequently, by the time I’d fed myself breakfast, broken camp, and checked out of the campgrounds, it was pretty much dead on 11am (the check-out time). Having done 3 riding days since Nelson, it was time to reprovision, so I swung by the grocery store and did so. Then I swung by the library, actually checked the hours rather than the mere open/closedness of it (like I had the previous evening), and discovered that it was closed for the entire long weekend.

So I got out of town and properly hit the road around 11:45am (again, having something of a maildrop induced anti-rush going on). The poorly cut rumble strips were paved over in places, or the road had since been re-paved with saner rumble strips in other places, but every now and then I came back across them. I amused myself with the thought that the machine cutting the strips had been operated by a chimpanzee on various drugs as part of some sort of experiment, and took to calling them “crack-monkey” rumble strips. I mentally replayed this video (or at least the monologue from it), and referring to the road conditions as “the crack-monkey’s strips” and saying “nice road crack monkey” to myself.

Such amusements were kinda necessary because even though I had scenery like this to look at:

I was in a patch of about 60km of light headwinds. I passed a heavily loaded touring cyclist going in the other direction, and felt a pang of envy for what were his tailwinds, but knew that I’d be pretty much turning right around again as soon as I got far enough south to have a decent pass into the Rockies.

It was actually pretty neat going along this little strip that allowed me to get into this space in the giant towering wall of rock (though it felt a little less giant from closer up)

Looking back:

and continuing on:

Once properly in the Rockies, it was necessary that I be reminded of the danger posed by mountain goats:

Noting from the picture that I should have been enjoying a nice descent there, any enjoyment was dampened considerably (often to the point of being completely overshadowed) by the fact that the shoulder was pretty consistently covered with gravel caught by the traffic barriers (well except for the crack monkey’s strips). Also while descending, I nearly shat myself when I saw this tunnel up ahead:

Note that by the time I stopped to take the picture, the light from the other side was already visible. It most certainly was not when I first saw the tunnel (I actually took the picture when I was stopping to turn on my lights for the tunnel — I still used them even though the tunnel was quite short).

After the tunnel, it wasn’t terribly far to Fernie which, like Cranbrook, I had figured on stopping just outside of. Fortunately, this time I was able to find a decent enough looking site to camp at the side of the road just before getting into town. The downside is that this site was partially visible from a small complex of condos/chalets.

No sooner did I have the tent pitched than a cop car pulled up on the other side of the street. Since he didn’t make a move, I decided to avoid creating the impression that I felt myself to be doing anything wrong, or in any way unentitled to be there, and continued nonchalantly to set up camp. He took a few notes, made a few calls on his radio, and finally, right after I’d unrolled my thermarest (because Murphy’s Law will take any enforcement it can get), politely informed me that if I went a couple hundred metres down the road just up ahead (and planly visible from where we were) there was a provincial park with campsites and, even though it was still closed, it would probably be more comfortable than where I currently was. I thanked him for the tip, mentioned that I was pretty exhausted while double-checking that the site is really close, and then asked him for a hand repacking my tent and gear. He cited another call as a reason not to help with the repacking and got going.

I moved on to the campsite (which was really nice, even with the yellow CAUTION tape across its entrance, though I neglected to take a picture). I think that the campground was closed on account of there still being snowpack on the ground, but there wasn’t any in the sites themselves, and camping near to snowpack didn’t really faze me anymore, so I enjoyed the nice (free!) campsite, with the pleasant picnic table, and no stupid materials used in providing level ground. Had the cop told me about the questionable road quality, or the short, steep climb up the first chunk of road, I might have stayed put, but the site was worth those minor hardships, and he was being exceptionally tactful in his telling me to move on, so I’m not going to fault him on that.