Mile Zero to Osoyoos, BC

LAUNCH DAY:  Monday, July 21, 2025

We are going to pedal bicycles across Canada. Camping along the way and staying with friends and family where possible.   

This adventure starts with a ride from the Gonzales neighbourhood in Victoria to the Mile Zero monument for photos and a ceremonial dip into the pacific waters. 

Sherrie's matchy-matchy rig is on the left and Andrew's matchy-matchy rig is on the right.

Before. 

It's a familiar ride for us through downtown Victoria to Sidney on the Lochside Trail. Flat and easy coast along with fabulous views of orchards, ranches and the Salish Sea. 

A short hello/goodbye to friends in Sidney and off to the ferry terminal over to Mayne Island.

The late ferry offers up a spectacular goodbye sunset, and we stay the night with family and a familiar space.  This is easy mode so far and feels a lot like cheating.  

Goodbye to Mayne Island in the morning comes with over 2 hours of ferry delays doing through-fare back to Vancouver Island and then onto the large ferry to Tsawwassen.  Ferries being WAY behind schedule is normal in the Gulf Islands especially during summer.  

This is Mayne Island from the ferry as we travel past, about 4 hours after having left to begin with.  

The ride to the moon begins in earnest when we depart the ferry terminal at Tsawwassen at around 5pm, with no specific plan of how far we'll get to or where we'll stay the night. 

Leaving Tsawwassen, we chose to ride along the boundry bay dyke and skipped the highway as we wanted to head down through White Rock and ride along very the edge of the known universe..... Zero Ave. 

The loose, fresh gravel on the dyke slowed us down a little bit but the ride was beautiful and worth the extra minutes.

Still all smiles enjoying the late afternoon ride along the flat dyke.

A view back over Langley after a long slow climb up zero ave. 

Zero Ave just kept going up. We knew there would be a payoff eventually but this was our first experience with real elevation gain. The ensuing downhill was ludicrous.   

After our late start, a friend on the ground hooked us up with a great wild camping spot 

along the Fraser River. This is where we spent night 2.

Woke up to a beautiful view, fresh mini-coffee and got ready to start the peddlin'.

A quick stop for breakfast.... blackberries ready for pickin'!  (motherload)

DEEP in to the patch for the big ones!

We continued avoiding major routes and biked community pathways through the beautiful corn fields of the Fraser Valley. 

First flat of the ride was entering Hope. We rode over a lot of glass in one section of the 

highway. Keeping concentration on a busy highway, looking out for debris without swerving into traffic can be intense. Sometimes you have to just ride over it.   

Sitting in a spot of shade to patch the tube we met a lovely lady, Charlene, who encouraged us to pick some fresh plums from her tree to take as road snacks before we continued through town.  Not an unpleasant delay at all. 

Spent the night in Hope, at a campground along the river where we swam and woke up to 

another of the husbands great mini moka pot coffees. The best way to start a day!  

(Blog post on our highly successful light-weight coffee setup coming soon) 

Getting ready to head up the grind of a hill leaving Hope. Elevation charts and anecdotes suggest this will be the hardest climb of the trip.  We'll see. 

Just outside of Hope before the road splits to highway #5 or #3... 

We took the #3, Crowsnest Pass, and began our climb, still feeling pretty chipper and friendly.

The first "hill" was a 7% incline for a life changing number of unknown kilometers. Felt like a full day. 

Sherrie still smiling through gasps for oxygen! A is in the back checking out Koomoot for elevation data, less friendly than 5 hours ago. 

It's not a race. Around every corner was another steep hill, each with more extreme elevation. 

There will never be an end of going uphill. 

Eventually, we did finally arrive at a summit, out of oxygen and hope, to legions of cheering fans and supporters......

Well WE definitely enjoyed a victorious moment anyway, throwing high fives on the side of the highway.   

A long downhill led us into Coldstream Campground in Manning Park for the night. A much needed rest after todays climb!

After a nice cool night, we were up early and on the road to Princeton. We had some good chats with some fellow cyclists over coffee, and commiserated on the hills in both directions. Bicycle travellers come in varying degrees of intensity, and everyone is going at a different speed.       

Entering Princeton saw a Road named Mayne and had to take a pic. 

A view of Princeton from a high pathway overlooking the old Mining town. Being in Princeton feels like being in an old Western film. We headed over to the O.K. Corral and fed our horses, restocked a few groceries and carried on through as we both still had some legs to keep going. 

Leaving Princeton, we split off of the #3 and onto Old Hedly Road. It's a beautiful ride along the the Similkameen River and getting off of the highway and away from the sound of the trucks tires was fabulous. We mostly had the road to ourselves and could ride side by side for long stretches.

Jacked-up, knobby-tired, turbo-diesel pickup trucks pulling huge ski boats and 5th wheels is easily the most uncomfortable part of cycling the highways. The sound of these engines and tire noise screaming by up the hills beside us shortens our time to exhaustion considerably.   

The #3 runs along the south side of the river, and we were parallel along the North with the river between us. This peaceful, mostly downhill section was our favourite ride so far. Found a lovely spot to camp for the night along this road at a provincial campground right on the river. 

One of the huge advantages of biking through BC and camping is that you are always by the river. We have been in the river everyday... swimming, washing clothes and using it as our water source most days. The connection to water in BC soothes the muscles from the days biking... or even a jump in part way through the day. 

This picture up the river from our swim spot is the quintessential slow-travel BC experience.  

A precocious Stellers' Jay came to visit us in the morning, curious to what we had on offer... (coffee wasn't his thing). 

The squirrels and birds at the campsites are well trained on getting at camping packs to see what's inside and show almost no fear when confronted. 

One scrappy squirrel offered to fight to the death for the contents of a pannier, which only had clothing and a sleeping mat. He moved on to another camp site for better prospects before any violence occurred.  

We've been storing all of our food and other items with scent, such as shampoo and toothpaste, in tightly sealed ziplock bags, and all rolled up in an airtight drybag placed well away from our tent.  So far this has been a successful way of keeping animal interest at bay. The park ranger was impressed and said it's a lot more cautious than most cyclists who apparently just leave their stuff on their bikes overnight and have their bags chewed on. We do have a cord to hang the bag high in a tree if we are more remote, but so far bears have not been a concern. They are happy and well fed on berries this time of year and not going to come poking around the busy roadside campgrounds. 

Another early start, and arriving in Keremeos we stopped for some breakfast cherries and a fill up on water at an interesting multi-cultural store featuring everything from Mexican ponchos to Indian Spices and curry mixes to bottles of Maple Syrup and homemade preserves.     

The Similkameen Valley... long beautiful stretches of highway, mostly traveling downhill towards the Okanagan along the river.  It was hot and we were glad we refilled our water bottles!

Took this picture half way up what we both thought must be the steepest hill we had climbed so far. But not to worry, around the corner was an even steeper hill.  

Lessons from the first days:  There will always be a truck with even bigger, noisier tires, and there will always come a steeper hill.  

Sherrie posing for a sunscreen advert. You can see the road we had conquered way back down the valley. It was HOT and in full sun, copious sunscreen and UV clothing has been paramount.  

Huge high-speed downhill ride coming into Osoyoos. Keep concentration high and modulate speed to avoid getting out of control. It's worth a stop to admire the view.  

Straight through downtown Osoyoos to Gyro Beach Park. We spent the evening here hanging out and enjoying the weather and a refreshing dip in the lake after a hard climb. 

Sherrie phoned her mum, who thinks we should wait until we're a little older to attempt this trip.  

First official rest day - we decided to spend an extra day here, swim in the lake and rest the legs for the big climbs up out of the valley. 

So yeah anyway, we just rode fully loaded bicycles from Victoria to Osoyoos.  No Big Deal. 

Wannes says nobody takes you seriously until you get out of BC.  

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