Wednesday, June 16

Well, the adventure has begun in earnest! Last night, on our way to our bed and breakfast, we saw a bear running onto the road. He went back into the ditch and Duane asked if we should get a picture - I said no, I was scared he'd get us. However, in retrospect, a picture probably would have been a good idea - after all, he wasn't a full-grown one. Oh, well.

Then, we got to our bed and breakfast - a horse ranch (the horses were gorgeous). The whole set-up outside was beautiful - lovely flowers and trees. So, we "check in." Now, let me tell you the characters involved in this episode - it starts with the 3-legged cat, the huge St. Bernard dog who wants to drool on you all the time, the eccentric hostess and the host who works outside and I'm not sure takes very good care of himself. The setting involved is a basement bedroom with two "secret doors" (that's what they look like) that had some water thing that goes on and off whenever someone uses water, a hole just cut into the floor of the bedroom with some tubes and a bucket in it (was it some kind of sump pump thing?) and wires just stapled to the tops of walls. Our bathroom was down there also - apparently used by the host and hostess as well (their bathroom upstairs had a claw foot tub that I wouldn't want to use). They weren't overly friendly when we arrived, but Duane managed to get them to a point where they sat down for quite a while and spoke with us. I told Duane we're sleeping and getting up and getting out of here! We did. We left there at 5:30 a.m. and we're sitting in the same coffee shop where I blogged yesterday. It was 34 degrees when we left - frost on everything (motorcycle, ditches). We're having a cup of coffee, some croissants and waiting a few minutes to let the sun do its thing and then we'll hit the road.

At one point last night, in the middle of the night, I said to Duane, "I feel like I'm in an Alfred Hitchcock movie or something." He told me it would be fine and go back to sleep. Well, at least he didn't lie about that. He might be lying this morning, though - we left so fast I didn't even look at my face this morning. I have no idea what my make-up even looks like - he says it's fine. Well, I'll never know I guess.

Well, that's all for now. We'll see how the rest of today goes.

Gayle - BOTB

OK, a few words from the front. This section may be a little techical, so if you want to skip it, feel free. The BMW is running great, the gas mileage varies a lot according to weather conditions. On a calm day running 110kph (roughly 70 mph) i've been getting 43 to 44 mpg. Now on one of those windy stretches, with a side or quartering to you wind, it's been as low as 36 mpg. Still not bad, but with gas up here running $1 a liter (I didn't do the conversion, but that's about $3.80 US I think.)

We should be getting into some hills today, so we'll see how it likes 9% grades, up and down and lots of shifting and curves. Sounds like a fun day to me!