It was too good an opportunity to pass up. My friend Friggs had a week paid for in Whistler, BC, but he couldn't use it, so he was looking to pass the trip along to someone else at a discount. By total coincidence, my birthday fell during this week, and I knew that EagleRider offers you a free one-day motorcycle rental on your birthday. And to top it off, Southwest Airlines had a great fare to Seattle and Southwest doesn't charge for a checked bag. That meant we could take our helmets and gear without paying extra. Riding a motorcycle around in British Columbia for a couple days was too good a deal to pass up, so Judy and I went. We decided to get the free day and pay for a second.
Of course the road between Whistler and Vancouver, where we would pick up the bike, is called the Sea to Sky Highway and it is, oh, just sort of fabulously spectacular. It seems that everywhere you go up in that neck of the woods is already modestly spectacular so take that up a very big notch and you'll get kind of an idea of the Sea to Sky.
We thought we got up early to blast into Vancouver to pick up the bike, but still found that the traffic in that beautiful city was going to make us late. We did finally get away on the bike around noon, thinking we would cruise east as far as the town of Hope and then double back to Vancouver and up to Whistler. But getting out of Vancouver was just as bad as getting in so when we reached Hope neither of us felt like doing it again. We chose instead to follow the loop that goes north from Hope to Lytton, to Lillooet, and over a pass up by Duffey Lake and over to Whistler. This was a lot of miles of slow going and it was already mid-afternoon but hitting Vancouver again at rush hour just did not appeal.
We were just a few miles out of Hope when we came to a road blockage. Word had been passed back that there had been an accident in the tunnel up ahead and it would be at least a 30-minute wait. We were in a steep, lush canyon so we figured there were about 10 million worse places to get stuck awhile, so we waited it out. Nearly an hour later we finally started moving again. And now it was nearly an hour later but the distance we needed to travel hadn't changed. Happy birthday, Ken.
Did I mention the entire area is gorgeous? We still preferred this to Vancouver traffic, even though it was slow going due to the backed up traffic all the way to where we turned off this road at Lytton to head for Lillooet. Then there was no one on the road but us. Yes! And we thoroughly enjoyed the cruise up to Lillooet. Approaching that little town we could see the massive rocks that tower over the tiny cleft where the road we would ride slipped through. They were shaded in deep blues by the oncoming dusk and the road went steeply up and up and up.
The further we climbed the cooler it got. Coming from Denver and an elevation over 5,000 feet we had not expected an elevation of just over 4,000 feet to be cold but with the approaching night it was. We had worn our summer riding gear and were wishing we had something a lot warmer to put on.
Once we reached a bit of elevation the road became just one running up a big canyon, up and down but trending upward. The beauty was still spell-binding but the cold was making it harder to appreciate. We finally reached the summit and started down. The inclines at both ends of this road are 15 percent or more so we came down a long way very quickly and it was amazing how quickly the temperature rose. We got down to Pemberton and had only 30 km to cover to reach Whistler. Somehow, despite the relative warmth, that 30 km seemed to be one of the longest stretches we rode. And when we finally reached our room we collapsed in exhaustion.
At that point we congratulated ourselves. If we had only taken the bike for one day we would have to get up early and hurry back to Vancouver with it. Instead, tomorrow would be the day to really enjoy ourselves. And long as our day had been, we still didn't regret not going back through Vancouver. You can get a bit of an idea what it's all like in the slide show at left. But pictures hardly do justice to this country.
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