Tour BC 2007 - Day 14

Day 14 - July 26



I got up around 6 and started breakfast. The rain fly was damp from the dew. One of the campsites had a fire going in their fire ring.

Then I broke camp, not bothering to stuff the sleeping bag in the stuff sack or packing the tent up properly. I found a tear in the side wall of the tent when I was at Bear Creek. I have no idea how I got it (I was told that there were no bears, but they had a raccoon problem). The place where it is torn is on the side where I keep my clothes. I have never had food there, and I was very careful to keep my food in the car. I will take the tent back to REI to see what they suggest.

I placed my leftover firewood in the backseat of the car. I wasn’t sure if I could take that back into the U.S. or not, but it will be easily accessible if I can’t.

I was on the road by 8:30 and to the border crossing at Patterson by 9:30. I was the only vehicle crossing. Then I took a leisurely trip following the Columbia River in Northern Washington state. There were many state parks along the river.

WA 25 became WA 28 at Davenport, WA 21 at Odessa to Kahlotus. There I found out that the road over the Lower Monumental Dam was closed, so I then took WA 260 to WA 261 where I crossed the Snake River at Lyons Ferry, and continued on WA 261 to Starbuck. Then I thought I would follow the back road to just outside of Waitsburg, but even though I have driven biked this route many times going northbound, I got confused and ended up on U.S. 12 east of Dayton – about 15 miles out of my way! I got home around 5:30 PM, and was very tired.

Pandora and Venus were both in the house and I fed them, even though it appeared that they had already been fed their dinner. They would have acted like they were starving anyway. Everything was fine, except it was a little warm in the house. I rectified that situation by opening the windows and turning on the swamp cooler.

I arrived back in town with a little over $12 in Canadian coins, and one penny in U.S. I will have to go to the bank tomorrow so that I can function here again.

Nikii who is now back from British Columbia