Bikely map

When I was waking up and going through the motions of breaking camp (most of which, like repacking the sleeping bag, rolling the thermarest back up, etc. are done without cracking open the tent fly) a family defied my expectations and came to the playground with their children at around 7am. I could hear the children playing, and the parents telling them that they could go and play on one of the other objects as soon as both of them were ready to play on it, and things like that.

Then I opened up my tent, and stepped out (pretty much fully dressed, since the morning was still pretty nippy), and the parents promptly rounded up their children and left the park. I was kind of disappointed by this behaviour, but not entirely surprised, since I was camping in a playground (creepy, or just poor/cheap?) when there was a pay-for-use campground across the street (but campgrounds invariably cost money, and all I’m looking for is a small patch of relatively level ground on which to pitch a (very small) tent, and something to hang my food bags from so that I don’t attract bears; there are plenty of those around that cost nothing. If I were pitching a larger tent, wanted to do laundry, planned on staying more than a single night and wanted to leave my tent unsupervised, etc. I could see spending the money, but I just can’t see paying more than a couple of bucks for one night with 2 square metres of land and a tree branch).

Anyhow, it occurred to me, at around the time I’d have breakfast, that I hadn’t picked up any breakfasts in Nelson (apart from the one that I ate there), so I threw some chocolate covered raisins down my throat as a hold-over, and set out to find a place with breakfast and a toilet.

I didn’t have to ride terribly far before I reached the “World Famous” Gray Creek Store. I got myself a muffin, and used the toilet there, and chatted a bit with the locals (before leaving, it was suggested to me that I set aside some money to stop and eat in diners/cafes/etc. as a way of meeting locals, but with one exception, I’ve found people far more willing to strike up conversations in check-out lines, across cash desks, etc. than I have in any of the places where I’ve eaten out). Anyhow, I continued along the east shore of Kootenay Lake, and found the terrain to be more the sort of riding I might expect from the Canadian Shield back in Ontario, except with scenery like this:

Though some scenery seemed entirely familiar:

After a while, I caught a glimpse of the south end of the lake

and since it looked very different from the rest of the area, made a point of taking a picture along it too:

It turns out that there was a bit more water on the other side yet

but that quickly ended, and revealed some terrain that looked almost prairie-like.

And by prairie-like, what I mean was “those damned high school geography teachers lied to us when they said the prairies are in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba”:

(I don’t think there was anything about a Wynndel Wheat Pool, but I’ll be damned if that’s not a grain elevator).

After that, there was a bit of a climb from Wynndel to Creston, upon which I made my obligatory “I’m tired I want to take a picture” stop

Being ahead of schedule (and having called ahead to the Lethbridge WSL host to see about receiving mail there, to find out that they’d be off touring for the long weekend, and get back late on Monday, so arriving too early might be problematic) I stopped at the Creston library to kill some time on the internet, after which I continued out of town in search of the time zone boundary (which I had been told was about 5 miles out). After about 15km, I decided that it must be unsigned, and looked for a place to camp at the side of the road.

While there was plenty of level ground beside the road, there wasn’t much by way of trees to hang my food from, so I found a road sign whose supports were made of box-steel with bolt holes drilled into it, locked by bike to it, and hung the food over it like so: