Myra Canyon

Yesterday (Sunday) it was too hot to do much of anything except some wine tasting.  The first place we tasted 4 whites and 3 reds, but liked the whites better, so we each got a glass and ordered tacos from the food truck.  While we waited for the food we enjoyed live music from a soloist and her guitar. The next winery was more elegant but we did not care for any of their wines.

Thinking that Mondays are usually quieter days for sightseeing (it wasn’t) we loaded up the bikes and headed to Myra Canyon to ride on the Kettle Valley Railway Trail of Trestles.  This rails-to-trails was originally built in 1912-1914 to carry freight and passengers thru Myra Canyon.  The tracks were removed in 1980. The trail runs around the rim of the canyon so is relatively flat. It contains 18 trestles and 2 tunnels, several rock cuts and a few land bridges. In 2003 wildfires swept thru the canyon and destroyed or badly damaged most of the trestles. They have all been replaced or repaired.  Several are now steel trestles, the rest are all wood.

It was a cool day and even cooler in the canyon but such a pretty ride.  It was a good day until 2 km from the car John got a flat tire on his bike. We stopped 3 times to pump it up enough to ride. At the car John had tools and patches to repair the tube but we couldn’t find the hole.  So he got out the spare tube, punctured it trying to put it in the tire, and could not fix the puncture.  Still couldn’t find the hole in the first tube.  So we put the bike on the rack and hoped it would not fall off on the way back.  When we got into town we drove to Walmart to get a new tube, no luck there.  On the way to a bike shop the Jeep overheated! We found a gas station, got some radiator fluid and that’s when we discovered that the radiator cap was loose likely never installed properly from the transmission service right before we left Sedalia. By the time we got home it was after 6 but that didn’t stop us from have a couple of cocktails to take the edge off the bad day.