Great Trail wk3 d6

We didn’t feel too bad leaving Princeton with plans to make it to Merritt today. Other than getting to participate in the Music Festival, Princeton was a bit of a bust. After being on beaches in Penicton and beautiful orchards like Summerland, it was tough to measure up. The hotel was, as noted, rough and with all of our things draped around the room trying to dry them it wasn’t exactly pretty.

Riding out of town we were faked out by a paved trail and a lit tunnel. We thought the ride would be easy. Pavement ended and we were soon bouncing across a fairly rough trail as this section is used by ATVs. But, it was so beautiful as we followed a river up to Otter Lake.

There we took a break and had a study session on the beach. We talked to a lady at the beach whose grandfather had bought lots in the town for $10. Their 500 square foot cabin, without running water, on one of those lots is now worth almost $300,000.

By BC standards this barely warrants being called a Lake. There’s only about a hundred square miles/boat which is quite crowded in this region. You might not be able to appreciate it but this picnic table is beautiful, well finished wood. This is a Regional Park. If you set a table like this in a park in Pueblo, you’d find it in the pawn shop the next day or in someone’s kitchen.

Eventually we headed north toward Merritt. It was out of our way, but our destination so we could spend Sunday where there was a church. Unfortunately, Google Maps believed there was a Rail Trail that continued North as well as South to Hope our destination on Monday. We should have recognized the signs as the trail got less and less worn but we didn’t want to turn back. Our hopes were eventually dashed as we came to a huge steep washed out section that was impassable and we had to turn back to catch the road. On a long day, that was frustrating, but we did have a tail wind that pushed us in to Merrit. A surprisingly hot and dry area that gets very little rain or snow according to the “why live in Merritt” website:).

Photos