On long motorcycle tours like this one, day two is always a bit of a challenge. My body often has minor aches and pains from day one, and this is the transition day where my body adjusts to longer days in the saddle. After day one, particularly the soul-crushing section getting out of Vancouver’s Lower Mainland, I slept great – maybe even a little too great. One of the main things I appreciate about a Best Western is that they always have a high-quality breakfast, which eliminates an extra stop for me in the first part of the day.

Today’s route continues along the Crowsnest Highway (aka Highway 3), bouncing along the southern border of the province. At first, the road climbs up the other side of the Okanagan Valley for a beautiful view of the valley below. Today’s view, however, shows much more of the contours of Highway 3 winding up to this beautiful viewpoint.

I got lucky, (or maybe unlucky) to find an RCMP officer sitting at the same overlook. Maybe it was my overbearing American amiability, but I just had to say hello. I mean, he was an actual RCMP officer – a Mountie. We have all sorts of different kinds of police in the United States, but there’s something cool about the RCMP in Canada. With the stumble, a stutter, and my two left feet, I walked up and said hello to see how he was doing.

It turns out that this was one of his favorite spots to just reset. He works locally in this region and often comes up here after difficult calls. Earlier in the morning, he got dispatched to a domestic violence incident that you could tell was rough on him. We chatted about Canada and the United States. If anything, I felt like I was a reasonable distraction as the curious tourist after a somewhat difficult morning. We laughed, we joked, and I totally played the tourist card to get a photo from a real RCMP officer. While I enjoyed our conversation, I promised we wouldn’t meet again, and he laughed and went on his day.

What intrigues me about the RCMP is that they are the federal police across Canada. In the States, we have the FBI and other police adjacent agencies; the federal government doesn’t police with a national agency like they do here. Some cities contract with the RCMP, while other larger cities, like Vancouver and Surry, have their own police forces. Some provinces, like Ontario, have provincial police, while others don’t. Canada doesn’t work like the States, where the state and local police take the lead on most orders of business. The federal police are deeply involved across the country.

As I got further and further away from the Okanagan Valley, the road began to follow the contours of the Kootenay Mountains. The Kootenays have been a mountain range that has deeply intrigued me since my trip to northern Idaho in 2005. The Kootenays sit between the Cascades on the west and the Rockies to the east, and their unique mountain range is filled with beautiful lakes, pine forests, and rugged outdoor adventure. They are broader-shouldered than the Cascades, but less imposing than in the heart of the Rockies and more solidly built than the Sierras to the south.

I can remember learning about the International Selkirk Loop when traveling on the southern side of this region in the United States. I didn’t know what that meant when I came upon it in 2005 – and in full confidence, I can’t say I know much about it now, but it feels like a tourist marketing scheme to get people to stay and spend money in the local area. Not that that’s bad, but I just didn’t follow the marketing to the outcome the local Chamber of Commerce I think was looking for.

I began to enjoy the features of the alpine. Beautiful rivers traverse this area, and the roads have gentle curves following the gigantic terrain. Life is good.

R got me a Garmin Inreach Mini 2 for Christmas – a gift that I am deeply thankful for. However, I have always struggled with where to place the device. In New Zealand, I kept it inside my suit and worried about something small and hard hitting my rib cage should I separate from the bike. I’ve also stored it in the top case of the motorcycle, but placing an RF device in a big metal box doesn’t do well for transmission in case I get lost or need help and can’t summon rescue authorities.

I sort of lucked into this little spot, placing the device off of the phone mount. Here, the device has an unobstructed view of the sky, so sending out location markers is dead simple, and the device isn’t tethered to me. Win-win!

It’s no secret that I love Highway 395 in Northern California. All of the mountain passes ultimately make their way along this Eastern Sierra scenic byway. Starting in the Southern California deserts, Highway 395 winds its way along the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevadas and then makes its way north into the high desert of northern California and Oregon, and then into the mountains of Washington.

Now here we are in southern British Columbia and at this piece of pavement terminates here into Highway 3. Highway 395 only makes it 2 1/2 miles into Canada – a bit of a humorous turn for one of America’s nearly border to border highways. While the British Colombians do take strong cues from American highway numbering systems. US 99, 97, 95, and 93 all have prominent Canadian counterparts. This one just didn’t make the cut much beyond the border.

I decided to take a cue from the Destination Highways book and shift from Highway 3 to Highway 3B to add in a few extra miles and a few extra twisties. Highway 3B brought me into the town of Rossland which is a quaint Alpine mountain ski town with lots of fun restaurants and things to do. I’ve also come to learn that Rossland has the highest per capita doctors to residents as the medical community likes to practice one day a week out here to maintain licensure and live in one of the province’s neatest places.

I’d made the assumption that I was in the Kootenays and that towns like this were plentiful so I decided to push on to Trail. R had mentioned a few times in conversation over the time we’ve been together so I figured it would be an opportune place to stop. Trail would be a bit of a later lunch, and I was okay with that. What I didn’t account for, however, was the long downhill twisty section of pavement between Rossland and Trail. Not only was it fairly technical I had the sun beating down on me in 32c (low 90sF) whether.

By the time I got to Trail, I was ravenous, tired, and somewhat dehydrated. Trail could not have been more different than Rossland. While Rossland seemed flush with cash, Trail very much felt very different. I couldn’t find a restaurant likely due to my tired, dehydrated self wandering around a town in a foreign county, so all I came up with was a Dairy Queen. Not my finest moment. I ordered chicken fingers and poutine to feel somewhat Canadian, LOL.

Right as I was sitting down, a few EMTs ran into the restaurant asking who made the call for help. Nobody answered, and you could feel the tension in the restaurant mixing between the patrons who were bewildered, the staff who were confused, and the EMTs who were searching for the person who made that call. Finally, after searching the restrooms, somebody spotted one of the patrons in the far back corner of the restaurant who was clearly distressed as a member of the transient community.

I took a pause, acknowledging how different our societal systems are between the United States and Canada. Here, this call was mostly handled by government services. Whereas in the United States, there would be an ambulance fee, a hospital fee, the physician fee, a medication fee, and an administrative processing fee that may be handled by private insurance, go nowhere if the person has no means to pay, or could cripple the person asking for help with 5 to 6 figure debt.

I’ve said it many times after spending a few seasons in Canada: nobody should be destroyed by medical debt. We can do better in America. We can do better.

After lunch in Trail, I started climbing back into the mountains, making my way to Slocan Lake. The geography of this area is filled with large mountains creating long, narrow lakes running north to south. While just over a mile and a half wide, Slocan Lake extends just over 25 miles long. Slocan Lake isn’t unique in this area; most bodies of water in British Columbia’s interior follow the same pattern, unlike Lake Tahoe which is both long and wide.

As I’m exploring The Interior, I’ve noticed the Ministry of Transportation in British Columbia doesn’t place a high premium on scenic overlooks. I am traveling through beautiful country, and I have seen exactly two scenic overlooks on my entire drive today. Contrast that with Northern California’s Highway 1, which is equally scenic having tons of places to turn out, take photos, and play tourist. I hadn’t really thought about that design decision in CalTrans’ planning, but it is one that I have come to appreciate. The roads in British Columbia are very much functional in nature; they transport people and things from one place to another. They are not near the tourist attraction for random motorcyclists like they are back home.

But I did, however, find my way to a scenic overlook along Slocan Lake. Aside from some smoke blowing in from northern Washington muddling the view, British Columbia continues to impress. Now, how do I get down to that big, beautiful body of water?

With social media consuming a chunk of my life, one of its benefits is that I’ve met people from all around the world, two of whom live right near Slocan Lake. We’ve chatted a number of times over the years. I reached out and said I was going to be in the area if they wanted to meet up. Initially, I got some nibbles, then the conversation went completely dark. Ghosted.

Sometimes we forget there are humans on the other side of an electronic conversation. Ghosting doesn’t detract from the fantastic experience I’m having out here. The meet-up was only to be additive, but it is sometimes hard to avoid the sting.

I took another cue from the Destination Highways book and decided to pursue DH 34 (BC 31A) to the north rather than taking the easy way to Ainsworth Hot Springs. This road had something I’d been missing most of my trip: athleticism in the ride. BC 31A was expertly designed, bringing speeds, turns, and beauty all into a 46 km (29 mi) stretch of asphalt. Two riders blew by me. The road was small enough to be off the RCMP’s radar, yet large enough to have some good fun on. Definitely glad to have taken the detour!

Aside from the redwoods, one of the things I don’t see often in Northern California is truly dense forest. I stopped on the side of the road to test the image stabilization of my camera down to 1/10 of a second (right). The rocks came out clear, but the water has the glow of flow. I also wanted to gaze into the forest (left). While the sun was clearly lower in the sky, the thick foliage cloaked any meaningful sunlight from the forest floor. It was fantastic to see how much different the foliage is here compared to back home.

I pulled into the gas station just south of Kaslo, hoping to get some fuel for the bike and fuel for me. As I filled up my tank, I saw the gas station attendant turn off the lights in the store, lock the front door, and walk to her car. I’m thinking, “It’s only 7 o’clock on a Friday evening. How can the gas station close?” R pops into my head, “Welcome to small-town BC!” I then counted my blessings and was thankful I got gas; otherwise, things had the potential to get real difficult, real fast.

I’d received a recommendation for Ainsworth Hot Springs from R’s building manager, along with Halcyon Hot Springs. While I couldn’t make Halcyon Hot Springs fit into a cohesive route, Ainsworth was the destination for tonight. They had a fantastic restaurant at the top of the hotel overlooking the hot spring and Kootenay Lake. My room had a wonderful view of Kootenay Lake. The hot spring was a welcome, warm soak after day two on the bike! Thanks, T, for the recommendation!

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