I am NOT a carrott!

I spent a lot of time riding with Carmen over the summer. Carmen's done a lot of touring, and visited a lot of cool places. The first time she mentioned this, I said that bike touring sounded like the perfect holiday.
I've always preferred staying at home to going places. I've never liked travelling. I've never seen the point. But maybe that was just before I started riding my bike. I've never seen the point of sitting in a car for four hours, driving around to find somewhere to park, to eat, to sleep. Then getting out and walking around shops (I hate shopping), getting bumped into by hurried, busy, angry people. This is how the holidays I've been on always seemed to go. What's the point of travelling all that way to do that. Honestly, I'd much rather be at work, in a familiar place, with my friends, hunting out coffin shaped shipping boxes to jump out of and scare my manager to bits.
I think the bike is the perfect method of transport. I don't like cars. (Not as transport anyway, but as recreation/sport I can see the appeal, in the same way as competitive cycling). Not because of "the environment" or anything like that, just because car journeys are boring, and nothing ever seems to be gained from them. In a car, you sit in a suspended, air conditioned, climate controlled box with the surroundings whooshing by at 100 km/h, in anatomically shaped and cushioned seats, with no passenger input (let alone effort) required. You might as well be teleported to your destination. Except teleportation is instant. Often more time is spent in the car travelling to and from the destination than is spent at the destination itself.
I also don't like cities. I don't like how people are in cities. People in cities don't see other people as individuals, just as a crowd, or as cashiers, bus drivers, or whatever, and this seems allow people to be rude and dismissive to others. I always seem to come back from the city angry.
The problem with bikes (and the major advantage of cars) is distance. For a day trip, I'm limited to about a 60 km radius. I could ride more than 120 km in a day, but any more would leave no time at the destination. Camping had never occurred to me. So I planned to ride to a hostel and stay overnight, then ride back. Or for longer "tours", to ride between hostels. I figured I could probably get everything I needed into a bag that I could strap under the saddle of my road bike. So I started research possible places and routes for a holiday, and it soon became apparent that there would be a lot I was missing out on if I had to find a hostel every night, especially in Canada, and hostels are usually in populated areas. I've never been camping before, unless you count sleeping Nigel's caravan awning on couch cushions, but the more thinking and reading I did, the more my plans moved towards full-on touring. So I needed a bike that could carry stuff, so I bought a Surly Cross Check frameset and put a mountain bike drivetrain on it and the wheels from the Lemond. I bought a tent and sleeping mat, and a Trangia stove, but the sleeping bag was going to be an issue.
When I was little my sleeping bag was rectangular, the same thickness as the quilt I had at home, and packed to the size of a straw bale. When I looked around (online, of course) to see what sort of sleeping bag I should get, I found that sleeping bags are now all carrot-shaped, bag of duck hair, and pack to the size of "large cantaloupes". This was a little perplexing to begin with, and not just because I still get cantaloupes confused with antelopes, but because I'm not shaped like a carrot. I certainly don't sleep in the shape of a carrot. I sleep like an egg, but they don't seem to make egg shaped sleeping bags, so what should I do? Does no one else sleep like an egg? How do you fit an egg inside a carrot? Although I could find no information on egg-shaped sleepers, I was able to find recommendations from starfish-shaped sleepers, and I now own a "MontBell Super Stretch Spiral Burrow Bag". Because of the elastic in it, it makes me look more like a fetal termite than an egg, it's make of synthetic duck hair, and although smaller than a bale (and an antelope), it's much bigger than a cantaloupe.
So, with termite-shaped bag in hand (well, on rack), I headed out for my first trip last weekend.
I rode to Croften, took the ferry to Saltspring, and rode down to Ruckle Park to camp for the night. After running errands in town, figuring how to get all the stuff strapped to the bike, and fixing a flat (air was leaking out from around the valve stem, but the tube must be several years old, as I've had that tire on that wheel for nearly two years and never had a flat (Michelin Krylions are great!), but the tube had six patches on), having to come back because I'd forgotten water bottles, missing the hourly ferry by 5 minutes, and stopping at the bakery for a muffin, I got to Ruckle Park at about 3:30 pm.
Saturday was a really warm day. It was as warm and sunny as summer, but the air was damp and it is definitely autumn. It rained all night, but had stopped by 5 am when I woke up (I start work at 7 am now, so get up early by habit). There was thick fog, that cleared up soon after it got light. I made a cup of tea and some breakfast, packed up, and headed back along a different road that was very twisty and up-and-downy, but nice and quiet.
Where to go next?