Bikely map

Woke up and headed out to reprovision at the Kootenay Co-op at around 8am. Grabbed a raspberry croissant for breakfast at a nearby cafe, and hit the road by 9am. I had some slight mechanical problems with my rear rack again (having raised it a little, it was now high enough to really clear the dropouts and swing over to rub against the spokes; I loosened the clamps and lowered it about 1/8-1/4″ so that the dropouts could pin it away from the wheel). Caught a nice mountain morning pic

on the way out before finally deciding to photograph a sign that I’d been seeing, and figured would be great for one of those motivational poster parodies:

I got to the ferry dock at Balfour at around half past noon, and asked at the shop there if I could stash my bags while making a little side trip to Ainsworth Hot Springs (before coming back to catch the ferry across). Along the way, there was some nice scenery, so…

(some of those were on the ride back)

The hot springs were quite nice, and one of the pools even went into a cave where the source sprung, which was really neat (but really steamy, and I stayed in the cave long enough the first time through that I was quite light-headed by the time I got out). Having left my food in Balfour, I ended up eating an exceedingly expensive BLT at the adjoining restaurant (because I was really hungry) as a hold over, and then headed back to Balfour where I was reunited with my pack, had another lunch, and caught the ferry across the lake. Once across the lake, it was apparent that the hippies aren’t confined to Nelson, as I encountered this pair of signs pretty much straight off the ferry:

The terrain got a bit rolling, and after climbing up a little bit of a hill, I coasted into Crawford Bay, where I found a playground (about 5km from the ferry terminal) in which to set up camp.