The Best Place on Earth

I left Jasper at 5pm the next day and rode 40km to Lucerne Campground.

The next day I rode by Mt. Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. It was clear enough out to see, and it was impressive. I'd like to climb one of its faces one day.

I continued on Hwy. 16 past Tete Jaune Cache to McBride. The mountains near McBride reminded me of the Appalachian Mountains, in terms of their shapes and colors. I wish I had stayed and hiked some of them.

The next day I continued on Hwy. 16. It had a lot of rolling hills, and passed over a lot of tourquoise-colored rivers. I saw a bunch of people rafting in the rivers and wondered why I was pedaling my bicycle on the hot asphalt instead of rafting in a river.

I stopped at Dome Creek Rest Area for the night. Around 8pm, a girl named Julie arrived on a bicycle. She was on her way back from riding the Dempster Highway, in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. She began the summer by bicycling down the Pacific Coast from Vancouver. She then hiked the first 250 miles of the PCT, but stopped after getting an infected blister. She still had the summer off though, so she rode the Cassiar and Dempster Highways, and now was on her way to Toronto. After eating a dinner of uncooked Ramen noodles, she left at 9pm, planning to continue another 40km to the next rest area. However, at 9:05pm she returned and told me she decided to stay. We went swimming in the river and ate some more snacks. She left at 4:30am, planning to ride the 258km to Jasper in one day. It had taken me two and a half days.

The next day I rode to Prince George, which was a really smelly small city, and its streets were surprisingly unpopulated for a Friday night.