Canada is so nice y'all!!!
We've been traveling in an area called the Kootenays, which includes some beautiful mountain ranges, a couple of giant dammed lakes, and forests that appear to be a mix of what we saw in the Colorado Rockies and the rainforests in Washington.
We spent our first full day of cycling in Canada along Kootenay Lake, which proved to be more challenging than we expected. We had 60 miles mapped out for that day, but the up and down hills would have made that exhausting, and really against the spirit of vacation. Camping options were slim-- we passed a sad looking RV park and some motels, and since the road is sandwiched between mountains and cliffs that lead to the lake, there weren't a lot of places to pull over. UNTIL.
Until I found the perfect spot! There was a big boulder formation that cascaded down toward the lake, but it appeared to be substantial enough to set up a tent. We climbed up and over the top and saw that if we scrambled down to the lake, there was a big flat rock right on the lake, and it was perfectly tent-sized. There was no one around for miles, and honestly I'm wondering how many times we'll manage to skinny dip this trip.
Adventures in the Kootenays continued the next morning as we boarded the free ferry that took us to the other side of the lake to Balfour. A man came up to us at the dock and suggested we camp in the free hike and bike campground just 10 km away, and from there we could hitchhike up the road to Kokanee Glacier and do some alpine hikes at the top the next day. I was extremely tired, so 10 km of riding sounded like a great plan to me. We battled mosquitoes in our creekside site all night but luckily napping and reading Dune was all I needed.
