Sunday, June 22, 2014

Our first ride: Vancouver to Tsawwassen

Sorry for the lack of posting these past few days!  We've been staying at campgrounds with limited access to internet.  Anyway, the past few days have been filled with some beautiful rides and rolling hills.  We aren't really hugging the Pacific yet, but the bays we've been riding near have been beautiful.

When leaving Vancouver, we decided not to follow the Adventure Cycling route because we wanted to go see Victoria.  Our first ride was from Vancouver to Tsawwassen.

Once we got outside of Vancouver, the countryside was quite beautiful.

Beautiful country homes outside of Vancouver.

Logs being floated down the river.

The biking was going great and we were keeping a good pace...until we hit the Alex Fraiser Bridge.  Even fully loaded, we weren't having a hard time keeping a pace between 13-15 mph.  This bridge, however, presented our first real challenge.


The bridge was actually designed to support bicycle access and has a separated bicycle section.  Even with our own lane, however, that climb was still very steep and quite long.  We both downshifted into our lowest gears and somehow we managed to pedal our way all the way to the top at a barely faster than walking pace.

Somehow we pedaled to the top!


Feeling tired but accomplished!

Coming down the bridge was actually kind of scary because I didn't want to accelerate too much and go too fast on such a narrow pathway.  After a couple more hours of pedaling, we finally made it to the city, Tsawwassen.

It was a long day of riding, but we made it!

Not long after passing the welcome sign, we made it to the RV park where we were staying for the night.

Our first campsite!

First time pitching the tent on the bike trip.

Our first camping dinner, cooking some pasta on the camp stove.

Our first night of camping was fun!  It was an RV park so we were the only people tent camping, but the staff was very friendly and helpful.  We spent some time reorganizing and repacking our bags and got a good night's sleep on my awesome air mattress.  So far the air mattress has been awesome!  No leaking or waking up on the ground yet!

From Tsawwassen, our next journey was to the ferry terminal where we took the ferry over to Victoria.

Riding up to the ferry terminal.  We biked through like a car.

The ferry carries cars, so we just walked our bikes on with the cars and stowed them along the wall.

Got my bike on the ferry.

Coming into Victoria!

We met our first group of fellow bike tourers on the ferry!  This couple have been touring together around the world for the past ten years and had just come from biking across the desert in the USA.

This is a couple of power-tourers!  They document their journey at http://www.culturequest.ca/

Anyway, that's it for our first journey.  We were just starting to feel like we were actually touring!  More to come soon about Victoria and crossing back into the USA!

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