Fried to Fernie

So my short time in Elkford is done and it's back out on the road. Not before an interesting time in the hotel pub the night before though. The small crowd in there were definitely locals (not to mention all driving home i reckon as well, so i won't be riding around anywhere after dark while I'm here) and my one or two well deserved beers became without choice more like 4, and some guy who would start singing at the top of his voice randomly insisted on buying everyone black Russians. This made the two and a half mile climb straight out the front door the next morning a bit bleeeeuggh!

But once that was over it has been a steady downhill ever since for the fifty miles into fernie. And the first half down to sparwood was really lovely just following the fording and elk rivers down the valley. I kept my eyes peeled for bears in the glades high up but no joy yet. Check out the hunting sign shot to s#$@ in the photo haha.

But in sparwood I did find a big beast. Checkout the size of the mutha truck in the photo below. The world's largest apparently. And having been past a mine on the way to sparwood, I can say that there isn't much sign of industry out here, but when the Canadians do industry they do it big! Sparwood was weird though, seemed mostly to be a mall car park with this truck in it.

Anyway the day was getting hot so I pressed on to fernie. In theory this was an easy 20 miles or so down the main highway. And in reality it was. But what I remember was being absolutely baked by the sun while riding into a warm headwind, and monster rig after monster rig driving past making me feel pretty vulnerable to a good squishing.

When I made it to fernie only a couple of hours later I was very relieved. Fernie being a famous ski resort it was somewhere I had been keen to check out. But at first it looked like it was going to be another north American town on a grid system with lots of dull boxes for buildings. But actually as I rode up and down its grid system some of the residential areas turned out to be lovely and feel well lived in, and not simply thrown up. And the old downtown area is pretty too, lots of old big square stone and brick buildings down one street.

I'm staying at a place called the raging elk hostel. It's kinda cool, i can see with its in-house cinema (meaning big telly and sofas), pool tables, bar etc. It would be real popular in ski season. However right now it's deserted, I haven't seen another guest all evening. I have a 4 bed room to myself. Result. Some of you will also be pleased to know it's an impressive $25 a night compared to $320

Anyway tomorrow is a rest day but I have a plan :-)