September 7
63mi/101km
2700ft/823m elevation gain
It was another fog-free morning, what a treat! It’s so much easier to get up and going when everything is dry. Today was pretty much entirely on dirt roads.
In the morning, we were in conifer forest, but we dropped down in elevation a little and came into a ton of deciduous trees, looking positively autumnal. It was very enjoyable riding.
At one point, we arrived at a road closure a long way from anywhere. We might have to backtrack over 10mi/16km, but it looked like a little washout. We took a closer look and could see that there was a footpath of sorts, so we went ahead. We were definitely not the first to do so.
In the afternoon we rode past lake after lake. We saw a bunch of nice little campgrounds. We stopped at one for a break, and decided to ride another 16mi/26km to a campground just about 10mi/16km from the town of Campbell River.
About 7mi/11km later, we came to another closure. We were meant to cross a dam, but it was closed for construction.
This time we not only had to backtrack 4mi/6km, we had to go back up and over a steep climb, then find a completely different route into town. It was a bit demoralizing, but once the hill was climbed, we had a nice descent and the rest of the day ended up flat and mostly lakeside.
We got to a campsite about 15mi/25km from town, right on the lake. There are a few others camped here but a couple empty sites, so we decided this was a good spot. We had a fire, our first in BC! The campgrounds here don’t have free firewood like in the Yukon, but sometimes people leave enough behind for us.
New bird today: Red-breasted Sapsucker. That one might be a new life bird for me. Today was mostly robins, flickers, and jays. We saw a bear, though not a very big one. And for the past couple days we’ve seen a few snakes, which are the first reptiles we’ve seen this trip. The plants have changed down here too. A lot more ferns. Lots of Douglas-firs. Fewer deciduous trees
