Venturing into Canada - Day 5 - Epic Motorcycle Ride

Wednesday, July 18, 2012 @ 7:00 PM in 2012 Epic Motorcycle Ride

I had one of the best nights of sleep I've ever had in a tent last night. Ryan said the same thing about last night as well. For some reason, whether it was because of all the miles we'd already put on, the location, the lack of noise or something, we just slept really really well.

We got up around 7:00am and took our time packing everything up and eating breakfast. Ryan's propane tank for his camping stove finally died and he doesn't have any backup. We set out for the border around 8:30 or so. We fueled up just outside of Birch Bay and then crossed the border on Highway 543 / Canada 15. I went through fine but Ryan ended up getting stopped and needed to be pulled aside to answer more questions. After that short delay we were on our way to North Vancouver. It seems like the entire city of Vancouver is under some kind of construction though. We hit more construction traffic than I care to remember in the span of 30 miles or so.

For some reason my GPS didn't have the point saved where all the hotels were. Instead it just had some random point in North Vancouver. I tried to navigate to where I thought I remembered the hotels but didn't have much luck. We pulled over and decided to go look down by Horseshoe Bay where the ferry terminal is to see if there was a hotel there. We got down there and found some little motel and went to see about the price. It was going to be $130 for the night which sounded a little high for the look of the place. We said we'd wait until they were finished cleaning the rooms and decided to go get lunch.

We ended up eating around the corner at a place called Trolls. They had good burgers and fries and are apparently known for their fish and chips. Our waitress told us to head back to North Vancouver or Squamish and Hotwire a hotel for cheap. We decided to head back to North Vancouver to try to find that row of hotels I had mapped out earlier. Turns out I was just off by one street which is why we didn't find them earlier. We checked into a Comfort Inn but the room was still being cleaned.

We waited around for a good hour and a half while the cleaning service made their way through the hotel. During that time we sat in the lobby and updated our ride reports with photos and checked out some of the other photos and video we took so far.

The plan was to get into our room and change into some lighter gear and head over to Lynn Canyon where we heard there was a nice park to walk around and see a suspension bridge. Originally we were going to head to the Capilano suspension bridge but the same waitress at Trolls told us it's probably not worth paying the $35 since you can get the same experience for free at Lynn Canyon.

Our room eventually opened up and we made our way to Lynn Canyon. We got there and were pretty impressed with the trails. The scenery is definitely stereotypical of what most people think of the Pacific Northwest. Very tall trees covered in moss, etc. We walked around and found some people jumping into huge pools of water from cliff faces then made our way to the suspension bridge. Unfortunately it was pretty packed, but the views were still neat.

We made our way back to the hotel and fueled up once again before heading back. Once inside I uploaded the ride report photos and we started washing all of our clothes. As of 10:00pm as I'm writing this report our clothes are still soaked so we'll see if they dry by the morning. After washing all of the clothes we set out walking around trying to find somewhere to eat. There were a few places that all looked a little too high scale for what we wanted. Eventually we stumbled into a place called The Cactus Club Cafe. I had a cajun chicken sandwich with a beer and Ryan had chicken tenders. Both were pretty good and the servers were very attentive.

After eating we set about trying to find more propane for Ryan. We first went to a sport store and they didn't have any camping equipment. They said to head back a few blocks to Walmart and they should. We got to Walmart and unfortunately the only kind of propane they have is for the big camping stoves you see people bring when they car camp. We'll just have to use my remaining propane tank until we can find another one.

We got back to the hotel, showered and tried to re-pack as much of our stuff as we could without getting all of our clothes packed. The plan for tomorrow is to get up at 6:00am so we can finish packing, eat and then head to the ferry terminal so we can get on the 7:45am ferry to Vancouver Island.

Teaser photos: