We started off this morning in beautiful weather for riding yet again.  On the cool side is always better for us.  We look at our KMs less when we are not battling the heat.

Our riding today took us through the “green” part of the “Evergreen State” of Washington.  No more desert for us.  What a relief!  Before we knew it we were in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho . . . or were we in British Columbia and we just crossed the border illegally?  Northern Idaho is definitely very similar in landscape to Jeremy’s home province of British Columbia.  We knew we were getting close to Canada, for sure. 

We crossed the border at Kingsgate, British Columbia.  The Canadian border crossing agents were very nice to us, for a change, but we still had to pull over, pay a little bit of duty, and open up our luggage on our bikes for them to take a peek.  You can never be too careful with motorcyclists, I guess . . . we have a bad reputation, you know.

It took us a little bit of time to adjust to everything being in metric again.  I had to re-train my brain to look at the outer ring numbers of my speedometer again that has the kilometers per hour instead of the inner ring numbers that were miles per hour.  We were happy to not have to translate the “distance to” signs any more into kilometers, though.  And kilometers go so much faster than miles!  You would drive for what seemed like forever in the states and the “distance to” sign for your destination would only go down two miles!  In Canada, we just seemed to be flying between the information signs!

After all we have seen in our 6000 miles in the United States, British Columbia still had the most outstanding mountains.  Mound Hood outside of Portland was impressive, but it was only one mountain.  In British Columbia, there are Mount Hood’s everywhere you look.  Even Jeremy, who grew up in British Columbia, was awed again by his home province.  It was like it was all new for him again experiencing his province on a motorcycle as opposed to being in a car.

We stopped in Cranbrook, British Columbia, for a visit with Jeremy’s grandparents.  They were very happy to see us and our motorcycles.  It was nice to see family again, too, after three weeks of visiting with complete strangers!

The weather turned a little grey and the wind picked up while we were in Cranbrook.  It started to rain a bit as we were gearing up to leave Cranbrook, but it was not enough to put on our rainsuits yet.  The rain chased us for awhile but we seemed to get ahead of it into some sunshine by Canal Flats.

As we got closer to Invermere, we started to see more and more classic cars going in the opposite direction.  It seemed to be our own personal parade!  At the turnoff for Invermere, we noticed people at the side of the road with lawnchairs.  Despite our momentous 6000 miles, we did not think the audience was to welcome us to Invermere.  Some people did wave at us, so we waved back.  We appeared to be caught up in a parade of classic cars through Invermere.  Very fun!

When we got to Jeremy’s Mom’s house, we found out that today was the Autumn Show and Shine in Radium Hot Springs and, as part of the show, they end the day with a parade through downtown Invermere.  We got to be part of the show but our bikes were far from shiny as they are covered in bugs from a dozen different states!

Ahhhhh . . . nice to be in Canada, again, though, and somewhere familiar.  We are looking forward to a day of rest tomorrow too.