The only greyhound out of Golden to Revelstoke was $40 and I feel like that was a little bit exsessive for a 3 hour bus ride and in talking with some of the people at the Hostel, they said hitching it would not be difficult on the trans Canada, so I decided to make it a part of the experience and see how I could do.  I headed out to a spot just out of town and waited.  I was surprised that I really only had to wait about 15-20 minutes to get someone to stop.  Keith pulled over and was able to offer me a ride all the way to Revelstoke.  He was in a pickup truck, had a very rural Canada accent and naked ladies hanging from his rearview mirror.  He was a construction foreman at a project in Red Deer and was on his way back to BC to see his family for the first time in a few weeks.  He was super nice and we had very interesting conversations about his snowmobiling antics.  It was my first time hitchhiking and it turned out great!

The drive had beautiful views and it went by pretty quick.  Before I knew it I was in Revelstoke.

I had read about a brewery in town which was apparently pretty good and I couldn’t check into my hostel yet, so I dropped off my bag and headed towards to the brewery.  Unfortunately this town was clearly a place where almost everyone has a car, so the brewery was about an hours walk out of town, with a quick jaunt on the Trans Canada Highway (which was a bit scary).  Eventually I made it to Mt.Begbie brewing company.

I sat down and grabbed a flight and was told that they would be doing a tour in a few minutes and so despite having to pay a few dollars for a small brewery tour (which I have been on a million for free) the guy seemed really cool and so I joined in.

One of the cool things I learned on the tour is that the head brewer was actually a physicist and actually designed a bunch of the filtering machinery himself including a custom made centrifuge and a unique cooling system.  This is the reason why I take tours.  After the tour, I moved onto the patio and enjoyed a brew and a view.

After the patio brew, I headed back on the hour trudge back to town.  I hung around downtown for a buit and stumbled across a marching band from nearby Salmon Arm as well as some other musical performances.  I was a bit tired so I headed to the Hostel and chilled with a few people hanging around in the hostel for the rest of the night.

The next morning I woke up fairly early to get a nice trail run in within the nearby Revelstoke national park.

There was apparently an old ski jump park in the place where I was running so the trail was called Soren Sorenson Trail named after a Danish skier who became a sign maker for Parks Canada and helped lay out the trail.  It was a nice 5km trail loop and then i added an extra 5km through the town.

There was also a really cool kids mountain bike park where small kids could ride their bikes over rollers and tiny sized obstacles.  I really wished I had something like that when I was a kid.  I used to ride up and down the dirt trails near my house over and over again on my bike, even sometimes creating new ones that were a bit more rugged.  This would have been so cool.

After my run, I decided I should do something with the rest of the day and renting a mountain bike seemed like the obvious thing to do, as revelstoke is known for their mountain biking trail network.  I rented a bike and set off for the trail that was recommended to me.  Let me just say, that I can run 42.2km with some excursion, but it has nothing on riding uphill for several kms on a  mountain bike.  I was sweating buckets and struggling for breath.  It was still fun, but it was really hard.  The thing that kept me going was that I got to ride the whole thing downhill on the way back, which i knew would be a lot of fun.

Probably would have been a good time to get out the GoPro but I apparently wasn’t thinking on that day.

After my ride, I returned the bike and headed back to the hostel for some rest.  After a bit of relaxation a few people from the hostel were talking about heading over to the athletic centre which was free when you stay at the Hostel.  I figured I would make it into a Triathlon day, so i joined them.  I also figured there would be a hot tub for which I desperately needed.  We got to the pool and it was huge.  There was a relaxation pool and lazy river, with a hot tub and then there was a lane swim pool with a diving board as well as a rock climbing wall over the water and a multi story slide!  We ended up staying there for several hours because it was pretty relaxing and fun (and there wasn’t much else to do in Revelstoke to be honest)

That night I was actually planning to take a night bus to Vancouver which ended up being delayed several hours.  Everything was closed around 10pm and the bus was due to arrive at 1am, so I had to sit on a Tim Hortons patio that was closed but not put away.  I read my book and chilled while waiting for the bus.  I took a few night buses in Japan and they were pretty comfortable allowing me to get almost a full nights sleep.  However, the greyhound was completely full, required us to change buses halfway and were not nearly as comfortable seats.  I slightly regret my decision, but once I got to Vancouver and had a bit of Caffeine, I felt ok.

And with that I can sign off and start another post about Vancouver!