USA - Canada - Mexico 2016 - Day 4

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Friday, 9 September 2016 - Fort Langley - Salmon Arm

Good day today. Slept 8 hours straight last night. Could have been the wonderful meal, could have been the Clare Valley Shiraz or maybe just the fact that we were finally here after 12 months of planning and the bike was ready to go. Whichever it was, it was great.

After some instruction on where to deviate from my planned route to travel a more scenic path we pulled out of Fort Langley at 10:00am. Nice run up the highway for a fuel stop at Hope. By coincidence, another Goldwing from Mission just over the USA border stopped in and we had a yarn. Things got a bit twisted then, he was out for a ride and heading up one direction, we were going up the main highway and had this planned detour to take so we parted ways. As it now turns out the Goldwing rider was heading up the highway John thought we were taking and our detour was actually on that route. We spent our morning looking for the exit John told us about and it wasn't until I checked the maps tonight I realised where things had gone wrong. I suspect the route we should have taken was much more scenic than ours.

There are some photos for the day below. Highway One was good road and started off beautifully tree-lined and I was surprised by how sparse the trees became in places, maybe the winter snow or logging. If someone knows, please let me know.

The train line pretty much follows the valleys and can frequently be seen from the road. Today was basically freight with large bulk carrier trains and another with shipping containers stacked two height. Glimpses of tourist groups rafting down river in the gorges appeared and disappeared too quickly to photograph.

Rolled into a service station before Kamloops for a refuel and lunch break. Check the photo, parked next to a "Commodore". Well, a Pontiac G8 which all car fans know is a left-hand drive Commodore exported to the USA before GM shut down Pontiac during the GFC.

Into Salmon Arm tonight, already ahead of schedule, beauty, and onward to Lake Louise and Banff tomorrow.

By the way, you may remember that I mentioned the Skytrain we took into central Vancouver and was wondering how they operated. Well, as it turns out, the trains are run remotely from a central point, no drivers or guards. Very efficient, both in performance and cost I imagine.

517 klms today, total to date 517 klms.