Day Seven
Lightning Lake Provincial Park to Kamloops: 498 KMS
Friday was the last day of our 2009 motorcycle trip. I was a little bummed out, and I knew Allen was too. We packed up for the last time and headed for the Manning Park store for a little breakfast at 10:30AM. It was a pretty slow ride to Princeton. We were in a long line of traffic in twisties for a good chunk of the ride. Ah well... We rode like mad men to Osoyoos once we made it by Princeton. Allen had arranged to do a site visit for his work. It took 10 minutes, and was right by the lake. I enjoyed looking around while he did his work. It was a scorcher day. Above 40 celsius. We always ride in full gear, so a trip to Dairy Queen was essential to cool off... and I'm a blizzard suck. We rode down to the lake afterwords and jumped in and cooled off while covertly checking out some of the better looking females. I don't get why females wear a different coloured top than the bottom. Why not present a unified theme? Am I wrong? Back in our gear, we headed down White Lake Road which is rated 17th by Destination Highways. It was a fun road and took us around Oliver and the heavy traffic. I'd ride it again. Allen had promised no cops on the road, and that of course jinxed us. One came at us from the opposite direction. We were tucked in behind a car, so no worries. We went by an Astrophysical Observatory near Mt Mclellan that I never knew existed. It was tucked in a valley with huge radar dishes pointing in all directions.
We did a speed run from Pentiction to Kelowna. It's a pretty dull road... enough said. We hit the Westside Road from Westbank to Vernon. We stopped at Bear Creek Provincial Park to jump in the water as we were both sweltering again. It took me back to being a teenager trying to get the other guy to fall off the log boom marking the swimming area on Okanagan Lake. It was a great break that I really needed.
Refreshed, we had a good ride up the rest of Westside Road. It's ranked number 11 by Destination Highways, and is a fun road to ride. Varied quality pavement, decreasing radius corners, and linked S curves make it exciting. The scenery is nice too with the lake near the road for most of the ride. Every so often a motorcyclist just nails a set of corners and it feels like you are flying. It's so effortless and perfect. The Westside Road has one set that brings a smile to my face everytime I ride it. A fire went through the area two days after we rode it, so the views have changed a little bit.
We split up at highway 97. Allen went home to Lumby and I continued on to Kamloops. It was bittersweet. We had such a good week, that it was a shame to end it going in separate directions. I'm happy that we made it work. It bugs me that we live in different cities though, but that makes man week more intense.
I tooled on to Falkland. That ride is rated 77th but I'd probably rate it higher. There's a great set of esses. I really enjoy the ride if it's traffic free. There's usually a bunch of traffic though. I stopped in Falkland for some gas and a cold Coke. It was about 6:30pm now and I knew Kenda was waiting for me. There was a lot of heavy vehicle traffic back to the Trans-Canada intersection, so the ride took awhile. I made it home around 7:30 and Kenda was so excited to see me alive!
Trip done. We've started talking about next year's trip