We said good bye to Lorne and Myra in the cold morning, and headed back along the road. Traffic was very light, and as soon as the sun got over the mountains and started hitting the road it warmed up. We had so many layers on it took a while as we continually stopped to take another layer off!
We arrived at the Manning Provincial Park rest stop where there was a carving of a bear. While we were stopped having a snack, we met Trish (please correct us!) and his hiking partner from Portland, Oregon. They had hiked 5500km on the Pacific Rim trail. It took them 5 to 5.5 months! We had a great chat, and Trish was very interested in our gear as he wanted to do a long-distance touring cycling trip next. We had a great chat, and said our good bye as they had just finished their trip and had to catch the next Greyhound bus.
We had expected today to be all downhill, but there was still some hills to climb. Eventually, we reached the sign that warned trucks stop and to check their brakes. We were so glad to see the sign, and we had an incredible downhill afterwards. At one section of the road, there was a bear by the side of the road. We stopped about 100m uphill from the bear and waited until he moved away. He was quite content with where he was and even after 10min he was still eating. It was quite comical as almost every car that came up the hill stopped and warned us about the bear, which we could clearly see from where we were and which is why we were stopped! But at least people were just being kind to us.
Eventually we had to make the decision to bike past the bear as we did not have all day to wait, and we were on a tight schedule to try to make it to the Harrison Hot Springs which we really desired. As soon as a vehicle stopped and a tourist got out to take a photo of the bear, we got our bear spray out just in case and biked on the opposite side of the road past the bear. The lady who was outside the car with her camera was trying to tell us there was a bear right there and we should get a photo (at least that’s the impression we got), but we were focused on the road and made no eye contact with the bear. If the bear decided to be aggressive the lady could have got back in the car, but we had no where to go but down the hill on our bikes (or stop and confront the black bear, although we probably could have out ran in on our bikes going downhill)! It was very exciting and we were glad it was over in a few seconds!
After some slight uphills, we had even more downhills to go. They were incredible downhills, and we were very glad to not have to climb any more hills. When we arrived in Hope at the bottom of the hill, we could immediately notice the temperature difference. It was so warm! What was even great was that the Trans-Canada highway had a marked bicycle shoulder, which is something we had not seen on our entire trip.
We stocked up on supplies in Hope and had a late lunch. As we were heading out of town a cop car passed us going the other direction. Then the cop car passed us going the same direction, pulled ahead, and the police officer got out of the car. We thought he was going to pull over a car, but he had no lights or sirens on. Then he let the cars passed, and pointed at me, and motioned me to pull over! I had no idea what I had done, but obviously listened to the police officer and pulled over with Katherine quickly following behind me.
Next thing we knew the cop just wanted to talk to us about our trip! He was really interested in our trip and our gear, and he said he loves to talk to all the touring cyclists to find out how their trip has been and where they were going. We had a great chat and after about 5 min he let us go on our merry way 🙂
We made very good time after Hope, as the road had flattened out. There were strong gusts of wind but they didn’t seem to affect us, and they eventually died away. We were worried about making it to Harrison Hot Springs before sunset, but arrived well over an hour before. We found a campground right next door to the public hot springs pool building, and promptly set up camp and had dinner. The hot springs were only open until 8PM, and we wanted to maximize our time in them. We managed to get there by 6:30PM, and had a great time relaxing our sore, cold, and tired bodies. It was exactly what we wanted, and we felt 100% better afterwards. What a way to end a long day of cycling, and well worth the 12km detour off the main road to get to Harrison Hot Springs!
Trip Around The World 
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