June 20 - Day 45- White River - 90.7 km, 635m

Celebrating over half way!!!

Winnie the Pooh 

Lunch spot

Selfie

 Another day done….and it was a great day….nice and easy.  I wasn’t in a rush again today, just a fun day.  I salted just enough this morning for it to warm up just a bit, so I was comfortable the whole day.  Although it looks like I was going uphill all day, I wasn’t.  The grade was good, not too many hills.  

I did see a mama black bear and a baby cross the highway not too far ahead of me, but I was going uphill….so couldn’t go very fast.  When I got to the area where I had seen her cross, she was there, hiding behind some rocks just watching me.  Then several vehicles passed, and by the time I was a ways away, and never saw her again.  About 15 km further, I stopped at a restaurant and had an ice cream.  The server was quite chatty, we talked about the bear….her take on it is that she was showing her cub how to cross the highway.   That’s certainly a possibility.  

I was starving when I arrived in White River….being hungry is new for me, so I had a meal after washing up.  I was still hungry, but too embarrassed to order more food so I went for a walk to another restaurant where I had my celebration that I didn’t have yesterday!!!!

So I’m in White River…their claim to fame is this is where Winnie the Pooh started.  The story goes that Lt Colbourn was a vet and was looking after horses on the train.  When the train stopped in White River and he saw an orphaned black bear beside a trapper, he offered the trapper $20 for the bear.  He named the bear Winnie after his hometown of Winnipeg.  Eventually he gave the bear to the London zoo, where A.A. Milne’s son Christopher Robins Milne loved the bear and would feed it spoon fulls of honey.  And the rest is history!!!!