Dear Diary...: One Word..... AMAZING!

Biking Down the Trail

So this weekend was... the Kettle Valley Trail Bike Ride with the cadet core! And man was it amazing!!

For those who don't know what the Kettle Valley Trail is...

The Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) is a historic railway that operated in the Thompson-Okanagan region of southern British Columbia.
It opened in 1915 and was abandoned in portions beginning in 1961, with the final segment falling into disuse in 1989.
Much of the railway's original route has been converted to a multi-use recreational trail, known as the Kettle Valley Rail Trail, which carries the Trans-Canada Trail through this part of British Columbia.
Taken from Wikipedia

Anyway, here's the Play-by-play:

So friday night we were dropped off at the armouries. We packed up out bikes, set up our sleeping area's and basicaly chilled. The sucky part was that the armouries had NO RUNNING WATER! So we had to drag buckets of water from the building across the parking lot into the armouries to flush the toilets & wash up. Before bed, the cadets watched a movie (Meet the Spartans) but I was kinda mad because the movie kept me and Casy awake until midnight....

Saturday we were up bright & early at 5:15am and got packed & ready for the day. We had breakfast, then loaded the bus to drive to our starting point. We were at our starting point & ready to take off by 9:00am! Thats really early!

We started with the Myra Canyon Provincial Park Trail, and got to go over all the tressles. For those reading my blog from out of the Okanagan/Canada, there was a really big fire in this whole area about 5 years ago. "Really Big" don't even begin to properly describe the size of this fire... Over 25,000 hectares of forest burnt up! I remember having ashes falling here in vernon, and we live a good hour and a half away from where the fire was!

Click Here for a picture someone took of the fire from Kelowna across the lake from where the fire was burning. Yes, that is a realy picture... crazy huh? I have pictures below of the area's where the fire hit. The burnt tree's are still there, 5 years later.. but you can see the new bush and forest slowly growing in! Thats very good!

Anyway, after biking a good 35 kilometers, we stopped for lunch at Chute lake. Lunch was military rations... but I was happy I got something I liked! After lunch we carried on, though the Naramata Section of the Kettle Valley Trail.

The Naramata section is another 50 kilometers, and took us from about 1:00pm until 7:oopm, including stopping for injuries, water, snacks and breaks. By the time we finished, we were just outside of Penticton. Then we loaded back onto the bus and drove back to Vernon (2 hour drive... if your speeding!).

Once we got back to Vernon, we basicaly chilled & relaxed. There was a BBQ for dinner, though it was really late (like 9:oopm) then we also prepared skits. The Jr.'s skit was... strange and I don't think any of the sr.'s or officers knew what was going on... but I guess thats what made it funny! The Sr.'s skit was a spoof of "Little Red Ridding Hood" and "The Three Little Pigs" mixed together. The cadets again watched a movie.. and again I was pretty mad.. because as it was, by the time we were done eating & the skits.. it was already like 11:30pm.. but yea.. I did eventually fall asleep anyway.

Today (sunday) we got to sleep in a little (like 8:00am) then we had to have breakfast and get ready to go home... but not me and Haywood.. Instead we got to get into our uniforms and drive to Sicamous to play for their core's ACR. I was really tired, but really happy I got to see my friends from Penticton, who met us there. The Parade went really good too! So that was a bonus! We also all went to D-Dutchmen Dairy for ice cream afterwards.

That was when we said goodbye to Penticton though, and left for home..

What an eventfull weekend huh? Sad thing is that I could not get many pictures as I forgot my memory card at home! (I know.. I'm stupid!) But I did take some while Biking..

Enjoy!

The Tressles across Myra Canyon