Day 17 June 16 116Km, 321m Vertical Climb, Clear blue sky and getting warm.

Bow Island to Walsh. Well I didn’t avoid the mossies. They bit my bum through my cycling shorts, both cheeks, back of both thighs, both knees, face and left wrist. So, first move after decamping was to visit the hunting sports shop in town to get some insect repellent. Bow Is. is not a very big town (about 10 shops) but the sports shop is Canada’s largest supplier of hunting bows and we got free education on the relative merits of crossbows and longbows and no insect repellent. When the need arises get a longbow because it shoots further and insect repellent at the foodstore because it is cheaper than the hunter’s odourless variety.
Eventually we got on our way through the prairies. We saw an occasional bend in the road and it went gently up and down most of the time. The prairies are not flat, they may seem like it to you folks in cars but that is probably because you’re asleep most of the time. We stopped in Seven Persons at the only cafe in town where all seven persons were having lunch. The microwaved toasted sandwich was not a success. Next stop was Medicine Hat where, after a more nourishing lunch break, we changed on to the Trans Canada Hwy for the last stage to Walsh situated just before the Saskatchewan border. Walsh is two gas stations and a few houses near the RR track. We saw there was a restaurant and bar so we set up camp on the small campground next to the Shell station. Shelley came over from her home to give us some advice on where to put the tent and when we asked about the location of the advertised washing machine she said it no longer worked so she took all our dirty laundry and put it through her machine. Now wasn’t that nice of her. Toilets and hot showers were available so after we got cleaned up off we went to do some shopping only to find that both gas stations only sold junk food, so off to the restaurant which was closed and lo and behold so was the bar. As we were the only people on the camp site we sat and chatted to a few Richardson Ground squirrels before turning in for an early night.