Border crossing day. Welcome to Canada.

June 13^th, 2026

Cache Creek, BC, Canada

Woke at the usual time today, 7:00am.

Sat in the dark for a while, then finally made myself get up and shower and start packing things up.

After getting packed, I geared up myself and took everything out to load the bike. 

Once loaded and checked out of the motel, I rode down a block to fuel up the bike.

Back on the road the Canadian Border arrived in about 10 minutes.  Slowly rode through trying to make sure I did not miss something and then pulled up to the checkpoint.

Border officer came out and did a quick visual of the bike, then asked for my passport and had me open up my helmet, all expected things.  Then asked a bunch of questions, some which were not really relevant, but whatever.

Then after a few speeches on penalties if I did not declare things like a firearm, and a bit of a lecture on having health insurance (as the medical costs for a tourist are not covered by Government, so could be costly) I was in the country.

Did a quick stop for the welcome to BC sign and then went to plot my course on Google Maps, only to find I no longer had data services.

Before I left, I updated my cellular plan (I was still on a plan from ages ago) which gave me far more stuff while in the US, but also added Canada and Mexico to my Call/Text/Data abilities (and all for same price I was already paying).

I notices on phone that I had cell signal, and I did get some text messages a bit later, but no data.

 So, I had to mess around with my Garmin to get a route plotted.  While it is nice being a real GPS and not needing internet to work, it is a pain to plot as it always wants an actual address, or you have to scroll around and point to where you want to go, but scrolling is far less usable on it versus the phone.

But it got me going in right direction.

About 20 minutes in and I decided to stop at a bank and see if the ATM would give me local currency, and thankfully it worked (not sure what kind of fee my bank will charge me).

Ride was pretty easy at this point, highway was busy, but not crazy, views were nice and winds were low.

We arrived in a larger town and I rode into the city center to find food as I had not had breakfast, so was hungry.  Found a Burger King and decided to just eat there since I was going to be quick, and many of them have free Wi-Fi, so I could check on some things.

I ate and then using the Wi-Fi I was able to download the offline maps for the region my trip was going to use, so at least navigation will work.  I will need to think about downloading the next few provinces’ data as well before I get there.

I then verified that, yes, I should have data, so either network in this region is weak, or does not partner with the roaming data services.  Sadly, I do not see this improving as I head farther north and into more remote areas.  May need to see if I can find a local SIM card somewhere.

Need to replace my phone so I can use eSim services.  This phone does not support them.

I then got back on the road with both GPS working, and was interesting to see them recommend different routes, and also how the Garmin is a lot more annoying about trying to re-route you back to its preferred route instead of immediately seeing the new route you are taking.

Google Maps seems to pick up on it immediately if you take a different highway than it recommended (this might be because it had recommended both routes, but was giving preference to the one I did not take, but quickly saw I was using the other one?

The ride along this huge lake near the town was nice, and views were amazing, but traffic was much heavier.

Finally reached another highway, this one a 4-lane running into the mountains.  I thought it would be busy, but was about the only thing on the road.  Think maybe 10 cars when past me over the 1.5 hours I was on this route.

This route was nice quality road, and faster speeds, but lots of hills, and started to climb up in altitude.

We eventually reached a top of around 5900 feet, which meant it was much cooler up there.  I had already expected it to get colder and put on my 2^nd layer under the riding jacket, but was still chilled.

After we came down a bit, I stopped at a rest area and warmed up some, it is much colder when moving!

At the next town the GPS and Google Maps both routed me onto the wrong road.  Well, wrong for Google Maps as just a few hours earlier it had routed me on a different road and that was the one I said start too, but again, it changes its mind part way through a route.  Thankfully I noticed right away and took the next exit, which had more options for fuel than the original route would have, but still annoying.

Fueled the bike (might have made it all the way on the tank I had, but would have been close, not worth the chance) and then headed back toward the highway I wanted to be on.

This little highway was also practically empty, for the first 30 minutes I saw maybe 2 cars, but was busier on the later part of the route.

Lots of nice views in this narrow valley, and no really high altitudes this time, actually started to come down in elevation and it started to warm up again.

Part way in the views became less pretty, but still unique.  The entire forest had burned, probably just a few years earlier, and every tree going up the entire mountain side was dead, eventually on both sides of the valley.

Roughly half way through this route, I saw as spot to try doing a photo shoot with the bike.  I tried to turn around in the narrow road and almost lost it as the road was newly poured asphalt, and lots of loose stuff on it still (had been going much slower on this route than others).  I also lost my balance in the process of correcting that and about hit the concrete barrier wall.   I then stopped and thought it odd that I smelled something hot, only to see the temperature gauge near the top.

This bike has never shown any extra engine temperature, even in Arizona summers, so this freaked me out.  I could smell the heat as well.

Shut off the engine and coasted the bike down a short hill to a better parking spot (better in that the bike would not tip over, but still not far off the road and uneven surface)

I got off the bike and took off my gear as it was getting warmer in the air as well.

I then turned the bike back on and now the temperature was fine??

I turned if off, spent a few minutes taking some photos, and finding a bush to relieve my bladder in and then checked it again.  Still normal.

So not sure why it heated up so much so quickly and went away just as quickly.  I can only suspect that since I was in a high gear and running the engine at low revs in the hills, perhaps that overheated something.  I have been trying to keep engine revs low as that impacts fuel economy on this bike (If I ride at 6000 RPM versus 4000 RPM, I will use fuel twice as fast.)

As I was in the middle of nowhere and on an Indian Reserve as well, I needed to get to the end of this highway segment 12 miles down the road where there was at least a small town.

I got on the bike and kept the revs a bit higher since I had plenty of fuel for this last short ride, and temperature never blinked again the entire hour I was riding.

We made it to the small town and turned up another highway with some great views, but did not do any stopping this time.

Finally arrived in the small town of Cache Creek, where I have booked a small motel room for 2 nights.

Been riding all day for 5 days, so time to take a day off the bike, and I desperately need to edit video.

I really thought I could edit a video each night, but the laptop slows me down over using the desktop back home, and the new 360 camera is going all kinds of stupid things to my videos, and costing me lots of time trying to get the framing done so I can edit the footage into the final cut.

After checking into the motel, I unloaded the bike and sat and rested for a bit, then got back on the bike and rode up and down the main highway to see what food options there were.  Decided to eat at a little drive-in restaurant and then came back to motel.

Walked across to the market to buy some drinks for the next 2 nights and then settled in to write this blog entry.

Then I will keep working on converting 360 camera footage so that I hopefully can edit up all the videos for the last 5 days tomorrow.

Its only 7:45 pm now, so hoping I can get this done, thankfully I have been recording shorter segments on the camera instead of letting it run non-stop for 3 hours.  While that allows you to catch some interesting things, it mostly just gives you 1.5 hours of the same scenery on the same highway and I only use maybe 30 seconds of that.

Probably will not write an entry for tomorrow except to announce the video posting, but will see what happens.

Catch ya down the road.

Chris

Todays Route: