GDMBR Day 39

Day 39

July 23

57 miles

Rough day, big ups and downs on a fairly flat elevation day.

Ended up on an industrial logging and sawmill road first thing in morning and was purposely run off the road by a logging truck. It was terrifing. I cried for a bit and wanted to get off the road and quit the whole thing but reasoned that they only force you off the road as a power play because they don't want you there. So it's all the more reason to keep going. But I hid behind bushes everytime I heard a truck coming after that anyways. Got in to Fernie, inner cynic fuming, feeling like common courtesy in the world is dead, and everyone sucks.

Fernie is a really cool town full of down hill mountain bikers and surrounded by beautiful mountains. Had a few people tell me I was still looking fresh and complimented my bike set up as "well thought out", "light", "beastly" and just a "cool rig" that made me feel a bit less frumpy. I had an amazing bagel sandwich with a fried egg, avocado, sprouts, sautéed onions, and tomato on a tomato basil bagel that helped too. Then I got back on the trail for a mostly up hill but beautifully made single track with flowers and views that made me happy again. The route jumps onto a highway for about 10 miles after the 10 miles of single track and I met some people picking and eating the berries I've been seeing all day but had never eaten before. They had a funny name.... And I tried them, but they weren't tasty enough to remember the name. Kind of gross and seedy actually, haha!

Then an empty coal train paralleled the highway and I pedaled faster to pretend to try and race it, and the conductor opened his window made the "petal faster" or "train chugging" circular hand motion and tooted the big train horn for me and everything was right with the world, happy just to be where I was and doing what I was doing again.

Took another wrong turn and ended up at the entrance to an old coal mine, oops, had to back track a mile or so. Lots of private land and no where really to camp so I'm in a scenic over look with interpretive signs and nice mountain view tonight. Has a good stream and lots of mosquitoes.

Dramatic first full day of Canada. I think I've decided to do the ice field parkway to finish the trip instead of the "official route" front range logging road. It's a bit shorter with bigger elevation gain and highway (and I really dislike highway) but I think I'll stear clear of the evil Canadian logging trucks. Plus it's supposed to be a lot prettier than the logging road and that's what most people have been doing to get to Jasper.