Ride Day 2: Port Renfrew to Lake Cowichan

Happy B-Day America!

Make America Great Again

Yeah, go Donald!

OK, you came here to read my blog, not hear about loser politicians.  Right?

We turn right today; north.  Our route takes us through the coastal hills on gravel roads to the Cowichan Valley and Lake Cowichan.  We aren't going far, only about 40 miles, but there is a bit of up.

It will be good to see how the wider tires that we're using this year do on the gravel as we expect to ride a lot of gravel this year.  For the bike nerds, er, aficionados, we have ridden on Schwalbe Ultra Marathon Plus tires for the past 5 years and have yet to get a flat -- and that counts about 18,000 miles of road time.  We have used 700c x 32 in year's past but this year we chose 700c x 35.  These aren't performance tires, but then, we're not a performance bike (or frankly, performance riders).  Fully loaded we are more like an RV so we appreciate the beefiness of these tires.  Last year in Iceland on the 32s on the gravel we nearly lost it on numerous occasions.  That wouldn't have been a good thing and I don't want to try it this year.

Did I mention that we were pretty much frozen after yesterday’s ride to Port Renfrew?  It was maybe 20 degrees but with the strong, cold headwind we got really cold.  But we had yummy clam chowder, curry rice soup and mussels at the Port Renfrew brew pub and that fixed things up.

The brewpub in Port Renfrew

Looking south down the entrance to the port

A sailboat heads into the harbor -- it was blowing hard out in the straits

We also got a good sleep at the Hobbit hole and were up early getting ready to ride.  Tomi’s, down the road, opened at 7 a.m. shortly after that we were filling our coffee cups.  We also had English muffin egg and ham things that were great and cheap and it made us dream up a special treat for the Solar Eclipse pancake breakfast: Eggclipse Stacks; two pancakes with egg and ham sandwiched between.

Breakfast at Tomi's

We were on the road to Lake Cowichan by 8 and we had a relatively short ride – 10 mile of a basically flat road following the Harris river, then 10 miles of climbing, and 20 miles of descending to Lake Cowichan.  It was a perfect morning, a bit chilly but no wind and the road was narrow and smooth and not a single car on it.  The locals told us to watch for bear and a couple of wolf packs that are in the area.  We hoped to see both, but at the end of the day had to be satisfied with a cute red fox that dashed across the road in front of us – I think we scared the crap out of him as we don’t make much noise.

The road wound its way through beautiful forests and past lakes.  But as we climbed we arrived at the logged out areas that are pretty blighted

Lizard Lake

A nurse tree in what we figured is a losing enterprise

They leave a narrow buffer between the road and the clear cuts.  Very considerate.

Harris Creek Canyon

We wanted to take a stop at a monstrous sitka tree but we couldn’t find it – what we’d read says that the tree has a 38 foot circumference.  It would have been cool to see, especially since much of the interior of the island has been logged many times over.

The climb up to the top include 4 or 5 switchbacks that were tougher than we’d guessed, but once over the top it was 20 miles of downhill all the way to Lake Cowichan.

The summit

Clear cuts on the way down

Lots of floaters going down the Cowichan River

Red Arrow beer from Duncan