Saturday, August 21, 2010

2010 Canadian Parks Tour - Day #4 Heading home Part 1

The journey home from my visit to the Canadian Rockies started when I left Jasper National Park and traveled through Mount Robson Provincial Park. The entrance to Mount Robson Park contained the only mountain goat that I saw on my trip:


Mount Robson is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, towering to 3954 metere/12972 feet.




Pressing on through Mount Robson park, I was also reacquainted with an old friend. The Fraser River, which I journeyed alongside on my first ride up to Lilllooet, originates in Mount Robson Park and it would be accompanying me down through much of my journey back to the Vancouver area.

The gorgeous mountain vistas continued along the way.


I rode through a lot of small towns as I continued on towards Wells Gray Provincial Park but did not make many stops, as I was going for a bit over 300 miles on the fourth day.
As with the mountain goat at Mount Robson, the only moose that I saw on my trip was not very lively.


Past Clearwater, I traveled on to Little Fort. There, I abandoned the Coquihalla (which I had taken South from TĂȘte Jaune Cache) and headed West on 24.

Amusingly, I had been prepared to see bears anywhere along my journey, especially in Banff and Jasper. But I did not see a bear until just after I had passed McDonald Pass on 24. As I rode along, a black bear suddenly ran across the road about 100 yards ahead. As I slowed to have more reaction time, he also slowed and then resumed running across the road.

Why did the bear cross the road? I don't know, maybe he was following a chicken? :)

One reason I was hurrying a bit was that the skies had been threatening rain since Clearwater and eventually they followed through on their threats. A light rain started, accompanied by some thunder. Having learned last year that it's smart not to ride in thunderstorms and heavy rain, I pulled into a small general store at Bridge Lake to wait out the thunderstorm and see if it would stop raining. The owners were very nice in letting me wait on their front porch.





After I thanked them and rode on, the rain did start up again but fortunately there was no more thunder/lightning. I reached the town of 100 Mile House and stopped for the night.

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