Towards Vancouver

Before you all rush off to Heathrow to pick up Jill, she has decided to stay for a while and after a good shower, a bit of pampering for Jill, a few big hugs and some more talking, we set off joining the 24 at Little Fort. We stopped off for lunch before joining the 97 south at 100 mile House. We were running low of petrol and as we passed one closed down petrol station after another, and all the petrol stations in my life come flooding to mind in vivid colour, we switched onto second reserve and slowly cruised into Clinton where there were 2, just like buses. My obsession with the running of the bike made me pull all the spark plug covers off, which I had done many times before and push and poke things in a very 'I know what I'm doing manner'. A small piece of metal fell out of the left top spark cap, broken off from the clip that holds it onto the spark plug, and Nancy has been running better every since. Joined the 99 and at Marble Canyon Provincial Park stopped for a tea time snooze as the temperature was hovering around the 35C mark. The 99 is a really beautiful road following a very deep canyon of the Frazer river to Lillooet where provisions were brought in a shop that had every type of tinned meat but little else. After another 25kms we came across a Forest service Recreation site called Cottonwood, that is user maintained and therefore free, beside a river. We stayed there for 2 nights in wonderful quiet solitude, going on short walks and resting. We left and carried on down the 99 to Whistler, which we looked around but found it rather a sprawling ski resort without a heart so didn't stop for any time. Further down the road we pull off and travelled the 7 kms up to the Whistler Olympic Park, that was created for the Olympics and had the Ski jumps and the Nordic sports. We were asked for a $5 a person donation to help towards the running. They still haven't worked out what they are going to do to try and recoup some of the overspend, although the lady we talked to said they had lots of ideas. As poor travellers we declined a donation, but wished them well. I'm sure that a covering of snow would do wonders for it but at this time of year it just looked like a very big scar in forested hills. The symbol was an Inukshuk
and Jill built her own
to leave behind as a lasting symbol of our friendship along with many others.
The road down to Vancouver had been upgraded for the Olympics and as we dropped down we entered Squamish Indian territory
which leads into Vancouver.