Mr & Mrs. Marmalade – 8

Last day in the Okanagan, and the effort of the trip is beginning to tell.  Plus, it’s genuinely hot today.  So let’s do something thoroughly tourist-y and ride the KVR through Myra Canyon.

This is the famous section of trestles and tunnels that was destroyed by fire back in 2003.

They’ve since restored it, and now it’s a favourite place to ride bikes, walk dogs, train for Ironman, etc.

It’s a nice little diversion, and it’s also a lot cooler up here than the 33C in the valley.

Anyway, it’s very scenic, even if somewhat dull to ride.

At least it’s not uphill.

Of course, it’s not down hill either, but we only did about 16km of it before dropping in to some great singletrack back down to Kelowna.

Yes, there’s plenty of singletrack to access off this section of KVR.

Get a room…

Definitely some epic light today in the Crawford Canyon.

Yes, we’re still on run #1 today.  I think it turned into something like 35km.

Not like it was some kind of death march or anything, but it was pretty long.

ANOTHER viewpoint?  OK, we’ll take another break.

After a hot lunch at the Eldorado (and I mean hot.  35C on the patio), we went to Gillard for a couple more laps.  Yvonne on a teeter…

This was a good warmup for the next few days, as we are heading to the North Shore and the Sunshine Coast for the last part of the tour.

OK, so you can’t hit ‘em all.  I think Yvonne would have hit this if we hadn’t been sorta tired out already.

Al and I cranked off one more fast one on the same lap before calling it quits.

While Yvonne waited for us and managed to snap this pic of doe and fawn.

Shock Monkey Okanagan – Day 4

This is better.  It might not be sunny, but it’s not raining either.  Everyone is battered from endless days of riding in the wet, so we took a mellow one today.  Finally, I’ve ridden the trestles in Myra Canyon.

Simon, missing the liquid falling from the sky, takes a giant whizz.

No seriously, it’s 130’ down there.

A nice little pano shot for comparison. 

Kind of a weenie wildlife encounter, but they don’t have chipmunks in Australia.

Please sir, can I have some more?

A millions laughs…

We could just ride a railway grade though, so we trundled on over to the Crawford DH.

And lo and behold, the sun actually came out.

Everything is wicked green right now after all that washing it got.

Our Monkeys didn’t know how to deal with Teddy Bear Junction.

But if I know my Aussies, Simon is thinking that he’d like to treat the Koala bears back home like this (every Australian I’ve ever met tells me Koala’s are fairly disgusting and vicious brutes).

They totally look like Koala’s if you just squint.