meander

after spending two and a half days in penneshaw waiting for the rain to stop we were ready to hit the road again.

during the down-time we mapped out an itinerary for getting around KI, based largely on the sparse number of campgrounds and the even sparser number of shops. we will be carrying food for 4-5 days at a time while we make our way around.

penneshaw has a medium sized supermarket so we stocked up there on sunday afternoon (7-day shopping!) and on monday morning packed the bikes.

we had been warned by a couple of other tourers that the climb out of penneshaw was the worst they encountered so we were ready for it. it was short and steep (8-10%) for the first 2km but pretty quickly flattened out and then headed down on to the north coast again anyway. for the first 25km we were riding on the main highway which we had been a little anxious about. the traffic wasn't too bad and we pulled over when it became obvious that the ferry had landed and a stream of traffic started overtaking us. there was only a gravel shoulder so we tended to ride on the road until we could hear a car coming and then pull over to let it past. there was one nasty shock when helen looked over her shoulder to find a tour bus had snuck up and was tootling along at 20km/h behind us!

our first main stop was at mount prospect, the highest point on the island, where we climbed the 500 steps to the top. we felt sorry for the tour bus passengers huffing and puffing their way up and clearly most of them had no idea where they were.

from there we hit the dirt roads and headed north up to american river (which isn't american, nor does it appear to be a river). kai had been put to bed (in the trailer) at mount prospect but it only took us 40 minutes to get to AR so dyon proceeded to ride around in circles for an extra hour (so he'd continue to sleep) while helen bought lunch and prepared it.

we camped right on the beach overlooking the moorings for half a dozen yachts in a gorgeous protected anchorage.