In August, the club was supposed to go on a ride that went from Vancouver to Whistler, up to Pemberton, and then over the Duffey Lake road to Lillooet and then back down along the Fraser River Canyon through Lytton and Hope. Because of an Iron Man event being held in the Sea to Sky area, roads were closed to traffic at certain times of the day. We regrouped and went on a different route – up the Coquihalla to Kamloops, over to Vernon, and down the Westside Road to Kelowna and back home. It turned out to be a 9 hour marathon run with a bit of rain here and there, but all in all it was not a bad day. We turned off the Coquihalla and took the Coldwater Road south of Merritt and headed on up towards Kamloops on the old Princeton Kamloops road – Hwy 5A along Nicola Lake.
I have never been on this road before and it had a lot of twisties and some great scenery along the way. We came into Kamloops and got onto another back road (Barnhartvale Rd) that connected up with the Monte Creek (Hwy 97) road into Falkland. We stopped at a nice diner in Westwold for lunch. Service was a bit slow – I don’t think they really were ready for 16 bikers all at once for lunch!
After lunch we got a bit wet on the way into Vernon. After stopping for fuel, we headed down the Westside Road along Okanagan Lake to Kelowna. The road was heavy with traffic and we were not really able to take the twisties like a Gold Wing should- fast! Once in Kelowna, the group split up and some headed for Princeton while several of us took the connector back to Merritt and home down the Coquihalla.
