Sunset Rides

[Lightcycle]

The season is quickly winding down,

Every ride starts later due to the cold mornings and inevitably ends with a race home against the dying rays of a sunset that seems to get earlier and earlier.

Following the tracks along the Monashee mountain range

We miss the fiery reds and oranges of the maples during the fall in Northern Ontario. But we gladly trade them for the freedom and beauty of riding through the mountains.

A brief sojourn at Grizzly Lake

A dry and rainless summer has left the water levels very low in all the surrounding lakes and rivers in the area.

Our riding season has been marred by wildfires and evacuation orders, our favorite OHV park has been razed to the ground by flames.

The setting sun is our last call warning, but the trip home is interrupted by a train

Even the mountains around us conspire to force the sun to disappear earlier than the official sunset times

Beautiful colours. I wish this fence wasn't here!

The blues, greys and dark purple grow bolder and quickly creep over the land as soon as the sun leaves us

 

[GreyGhost]

If it makes you feel any better, colours are more muted this year. Something about the temperature wasn't right to develop the chemical needed for bright red.

Nice pics. Thanks for posting.

 

[sburns]

If it makes you feel any better, colours are more muted this year. Something about the temperature wasn't right to develop the chemical needed for bright red.

Nice pics. Thanks for posting.

I was wondering about that, either that or my eyes started to go, glad they are not!

 

[MacDoc]

Yeah definitely lower intensity colour even at peak Algonquin but had a nice day with dottor and a pickerel feed. One sheltered pull off had a pleasing mix but the sky was very flat colour with glare as well.

 

[Lightcycle]

Another late afternoon jaunt up to the snowmobile trails in Myra Canyon.

This is the Okanagan's version of fall colours - pale yellows and oranges line our path of travel:

In another couple of months, these trails will be covered in snow

We switched bikes and I got to try out the Husky's suspension in some of the bumpy stuff. The longer travel suspension is noticeable vs the GS and it is a more off-road worthy ADV than the big boxer.

A friend from work has been asking us to come over to his cottage all summer, but our schedules have never co-ordinated. It's only now, in the late fall that we're in the area at the same time.

His cottage is a bit further south, right on Idleback Lake. I've never been here before, it's beautiful.

We spend a couple of hours on his deck chatting with a drink and watching the sun slowly sink across the lake

My buddy tells me the lake freezes over very quickly in the winter and by December, he takes his snowmobile out to go ripping out on the ice.

Lightbulbs go off in my head - we can bring our bikes with the studded tires out here! So looking forward to the snow now!

It's so idyllic here and we'd like to stay longer, but the sun is dangerously low on the horizon and we don't want to be riding through the woods in the dark. Not so much because of the terrain or animals, but because it gets frickin'freezing, the minute the sun disappears.

On the way back home, we get treated to yet another magnificent Okanagan sunset

I don't mind this.

Not at all.