XCAN Day 11 Castlegar to Grey Creek

Distance:              87 km

Time:                    3:46 or 5 hours - our gamins are not agreeing

Elevation gained: 917 m

Weather:              cloudy with sunny breaks.  Beautiful temperature for riding.

Flats: none

Today involved riding from our great campground that was a drive-in theatre in the past to Gray Creek but included a (free) ferry ride for 35 minutes.  

We rode for 40 km to Nelson where we met one of Heidi’s friends at Oso Negro coffee shop for an early lunch.  Riding into Nelson there was an Osprey nest on top of a pole with cameras pointing into the nest.  

From Nelson we rode a rolling quiet road to the ferry, 74km at this point.  Mike saw a barred owl on the way to the ferry, along the same road where a sign for yet another drive-in theatre was spotted.  We’ve done a lot of reminiscing about our drive-in theatre experiences from our youth.  

We had to wait 1.5 hours for the next ferry and went into the restaurant to wait where we resumed our chat with the Australian couple we have been playing leap-frog with on the road.  They are riding mountain bikes with panniers and somehow we keep meeting them on the road.  

The ride from the ferry was 13 km to the campground - straight uphill for 2.5km and then rolling by the Kootenay Lake. 

We stayed across the road from a clothing optional beach - we were wondering where Mike disappeared to for so long.  

A huge thunder store rolled through as we were preparing for dinner and it poured for about 15 minutes.   

We certainly have had a lot of rain on this trip!

Nancy and Dave