Day 5 Sparwood BC to Baynes Lake BC

Today being my birthday, I woke to many online best wishes plus coffee in bed, card & gift – courtesy of Dan.

After, focused on preparing Dan for the Flathead Alternate – a challenging, remote 2-3 day ride.

Having waved Dan off, I turned to set off myself to find my Garmin (GPS) was frozen. Several attempts later it went to factory reset. – all routes were now lost! Again & again I’ve suffered the pain of poor quality on my Edge 1030. If anyone has £500+ & thinks buying one is a good idea – don’t waste your money!!!

Taking the quickest route to Fernie, Gear Hub (Elek Wenzlawe) helped me upload my lost routes. This is a brilliant shop with great cycle community attitude! Something greatly lacking at Straight Line Cycles – totally unhelpful – they just said no, without explanation.

Nessa, is the lady with the STOP sign on Cokato Road, south of Fernie. She kept me waiting for over 30mins whilst heavy machinery built up the road following last November’s floods – not from the Elk River but the many small streams that drop from the high mountains – & did not spare the expensive houses. Having tried living in Fernie, Sparwood is Nessa’s chosen home – real community there she tells me. I can see her point of view.

My destination for tonight was to be Elkco. 4 years ago, 2 brothers had, for the previous 30 yrs, run the gas station, shop, motel, camp site & pretty much everything else in town. They had moved on & now was far less welcoming. 8m on & I hit Baynes Lake.

Here I got lucky when Ken & Joanne kindly agreed to let me camp in their garden – most idilic spot looking out to the lake. Soon after a chair was provided to enjoy the sunset in comfort – after all it was my birthday!!