Yahk-ity

It has been a few days since I have had internet availability, so there is a lot to get caught up on.

We had stayed the night in a cabin with two bedrooms, a kitchen and living room (and bath), which turned out to be a real pleasure. We also had now changed to the Mountain Time Zone, so we lost an hour. On top of that, we decided to get up fairly

early and get going to Creston, then Yahk. 

We set off down the highway (we began by going up, of course: this is BC, after all. The road was not great, and there was no shoulder to speak of. But traffic was light. We went through Sanca, Kuskanook, Sirdar: a bunch of little towns that had at most three buildings in them, each. Terrific views of the lake, and the lake was awesome, with the mountains behind it, and some snow still on the hillsides. Lots of ups and downs, nothing too terrible, but you did begin to wonder if there wasn't a slightly sadistic bent to the traffic engineers.

Barry and I stopped a few times: once at a makeshift memorial to a person killed along the highway, perhaps by going over the edge of the road for a long and final trip down to the water. And another, more formal memorial to the people who had drowned in that part of the lake since the late 1800's. There were many, unfortunately.

The bottom end of Kootenay Lake is the place where there used to be a town called Kootenay Station, which was the terminus for the CPR at one point. The train still goes through there, but it is not a terminus of anything at this point, and the town has disappeared.

The land got actually flat, and there was a grassy part to the water that was renamed Duck Lake, and formed the southern grasslands of Kootenay Lake. Eventually, we came to an area which had been dyked and turned into farmland, looking very productive in the summer sun.

And here is where the strangeness of those BC engineers comes in. There was this wonderful flat land where they could put a road. So do they put it there? No, they see a mountain and decide that they must put the road up the hill, just to prove...what, exactly? There must be too much testosterone in this province: if at all possible, build the road where you need to dynamite and bulldoze lots of rocks.

If it sounds as if I was frustrated at this point, you would be right. It felt like I finally could get a break with a flat road, and it was snatched from me.

So we got into Creston (by the way, the polygamous community of Bountiful is right near there, so Barry and I had our eyes open for stray extra wives; no luck). We met Nancy, who directed us to a local bookstore/coffee shop, and we decided to have some lunch there as well, so had a brownie. And read a book for a while.

Then on for the final twenty kilometres to Yahk. This involved following the Moyie River upstream. Some hills (what else), then a long stretch of actual flatness. It was great. Just before Yahk, we crossed the Moyie river and there was a farm there with an actual yak in the yard (see picture). We tried to get close to it for the picture, but this was as close as we got. We checked into the Yahk Motel, into a room with two queen beds covered with wonderful bedspreads, and pretty minimal everything else. They let us use their BBQ, and we grilled a steak and went to bed early. We were only fifty feet from the highway and a bit more from the railway, so there was a bit of noise to get through, but we were tired, and sleep cam easily and fully. Biked about 80 km that day.