Day 9: A Ride to Paradise

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We had a big day of 128kms in front of us, so we had a good breakfast at the hotel and sneaked a few things from the buffet into our jerseys for morning tea.
We were riding from Kelowna to Verona (54km) and then on to Sicamous (74kms). Our ride out of Kalowna was along Lake Okanagan again. Much nicer scenery and much less noisy than the direct route on the highway. Not too far out of town we passed our first garage sale and made the mandatory stop for Jeff and Tom to have a peruse. Ironically it was me who bought something not them (tools for the bikes). A short while later we passed a bike shop and made a stop to check pressure in our tyres after the battering they had taken over the last few days on the rail trail.
Lake Okanagan was spectacular today. It's water under a blue sky was a bright turquoise. At times there was no wind and you could get perfect reflections of the mountains over the lake. We made Vernon some time after 12pm and stopped for a healthy lunch. With still had 75kms to ride though so we needed to keep moving.
We had to travel on the main highway for a while but we were making good time, so much so, that we decided to stop for a drink in a small town called Enderby. We went in to the first shop we saw and ended up staying for almost an hour. The shop, Little City Merchant, run by Sean and Carrie, was a cross between a coffee shop and a deli but also put on live music regularly. They had an area set up which resembled Jeff's garage on music night. Sean is also a musician and is putting out an album soon. Jeff asked him for a sample and we got an impromptu performance of 3 original songs. What a treat! For Jeff, he got a garage sale and live music all in one day - it doesn't get better than that.
When we eventually left we took the back road to Sicamous. Apart from getting a sprinkle of rain it was a great ride with more lakes providing brilliant reflections of the surrounding ranges. Tom did a great job of towing us home for the last 20kms to the Paradise Hotel.
A big day of 128kms conquered. Tomorrow is a shorter day of 75kms before we hit the big mountains. I hope the legs are strong enough by then.

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