Day 28 June 27, 125km, 276m Vertical, 19°C overcast, strong NW wind

Cartwright to Winkler.
A cool start around 9am with zilch for breakfast. The possibility of 10mm of rain was forecast but fortunately we only had a few drops and the bad weather stayed about 50km north of us. It was an uneventful start and we targeted Crystal City (a grand name for a farming village) for a breakfast stop.

Now I must digress to provide some background info. A few days ago TimB noticed that the left hand lowrider frame was rattling and he found that the metal around the bottom screw holding the frame onto the bottom of the fork had broken. We needed somebody who could weld aluminium.

We hadn’t spotted anywhere open to get it fixed until entering Crystal City. The guy at the first auto repair shop sent us round the corner to a workshop where there was somebody who it appeared was able to repair a wide variety of machines. John Pride is the man. His inspection of the problem on TimB’s bike elicited the comment “who made this piece of crap?” but he didn’t pursue this line of enquiry seriously and proceeded to remove the frame and retire into the workshop. In the meantime 3 other local men have turned up and suddenly six chairs are set up in the workshop and we all sit down and chat away. Before too long John has welded a new end piece onto the lowrider frame, drilled a new whole, sprayed it black and fitted it back on the bike. What service, what a hero, and for a miserly 10$ (6.60 Euros) for all his effort. My guess is that John’s repair will easily outlast the other mountings.. After this marvellous experience we stayed in the village for lunch (being in the meantime too late for breakfast) and then set off for La Riviere where we dropped into the river valley hitting 68kph for the first time since the Rockies and had a short tea break before starting the climb out of the valley. Lariviere is the home of the wild turkey. The next 10km were a dream. A brand new asphalt surface as close to being as smooth as a billiard table as a road can be. In the meantime the prairie wind had strengthened to 40+kph and we tore along the last 50km to Winkler at 40-45kph. It was great. Let’s have more. We have now settled in a motel here for our rest day.

Day 27 June 26, 92km, 25°C heavy showers followed by sun. S. wind

International Peace Gardens to Cartwright.
We had a record slow start to our day as we left the campsite at 1:55 pm. We awoke at 6:30 to light rain so we stayed in bed. At 9:00 we had wind and heavy rain so we stayed in bed. At 10:30 the sun came out so we left everything to dry and rushed over to the park café for breakfast (breakfast ends at 11:00). We had a nice breakfast and a good chat with the lady who manages the café. We returned to our tent to dry things out, pack up and depart. We immediately hit the US border which took another half hour to process TimG (an alien). We finally hit the open road at 2:30 and rode about 40 km east through North Dakota and then returned to Canada. The guard in Canada spent more time chatting with us than usual because he was curious about our trip (and appeared to have a very quiet border post). We carried on to Cartwright where we are spending the night in a motel because thunder showers are forecast.

Day 26 June 25, 76km, 25°C cloudy, NW wind

Deloraine to International Peace Gardens.
We had a good start to the day with the NW wind pushing us east at a healthy clip until we turned south to head up Turtle Mountain (it’s only a hill really and doesn’t deserve the name mountain)It was only 19km to the park where we intended to camp but there were no places with grass for a tent and the overflow site had grass but only pit toilets and no showers or running water. TimB claimed he wanted to stay there but it was a little too close to nature for me so we moved off down to the Peace Gardens on the border to think about it. As it turned out the Peace Gardens had a much nicer campsite and full facilities so that is where we stayed. We did the walk through the gardens and rode the north and south scenic routes around the woods and lakes. The chef cooked dinner on a campsite table and we enjoyed chicken soup with rice followed by rice with tinned chicken flakes tossed in. I was glad I’d had a nice strawberry milkshake at the park café. I won’t give you any details on the park, have fun looking it up on the web. The full name is International Peace Park. Night night.

Day 25 June 24 72km; 22°C sunny start, clouding later; 121m vertical

Pierson to Deloraine.
Oh oh oh were we late starting today. Lazed around in the tent under a bright blue sky reading novels and eventually decamped to the Heritage Café for breakfast. The café was full of locals who had all probably done half a days work by the time we got there at 9:20. We ate, chatted to several people, shopped, phoned home, took some pictures and eventually got on our way shortly before 12. Now we thought we might crack on like we did yesterday but the wind had turned 180deg. and was in our faces again. It turned out to be a slow day and the skies darkened steadily. We didn’t arrive here in Deloraine until after 4:30 and we still had 50km to do to get to Turtle Mountain when it started to rain. That caused us to rethink our target and when we found a motel room for $62 (42Euros) we decided to stay here for the night and move on to Turtle Mountain tomorrow where we will camp at the provincial park and take time out to visit the International Peace Gardens. They have a bar here as well. Night night.

Day 24 June 23 122km; 22°C and cloudy, clearing later; 101m vertical

Carlyle to Pierson: What TimB didn’t mention yesterday was that when we arrived in Carlyle and checked out the campsite we were attacked by the mosquitoes and both bitten 3 times in less than a minute so we escaped to the only motel in town. Being a Sunday the bar & restaurant were shut but this morning the restaurant was open and offering cooked breakfasts which was too good to pass on. So, after a leisurely breakfast, a visit to the shop for our daily supply of bananas and a visit to the bank for an injection of cash it was 11 o’clock before we were on our way. A short sharp shower as we left town made the day look fairly ominous but it stopped before I could get my rain jacket on and for the rest of the day we only saw showers at a distance. Yesterday had been hard work with head winds but today we were rewarded with a SW wind pushing us east swinging round to NW at midday just in time to blow us south from Redvers to Cairevale. The 46km from Redvers to Carievale were done mostly at around 35kph and even the 13km of roadworks didn’t slow us down significantly. The last leg was 25km to Pierson taking us over the Sask border into Manitoba where we entered another time zone and advancing the clocks an hour meant we had arrived after six and were too late for the shops again. Fortunately, we were able to eat at the Heritage Café which seemed to be a meeting place for the locals. The waitress was very helpful and telephoned around to arrange for us to camp on the sports ground near the baseball diamond. When we went over there after dinner TimB was looking around the grounds for the toilets when too guys turned up in a pickup truck and showed me the ice rink arena and decided to leave it open for the night so that we could use the hot showers and toilets in there. All this is at no charge!!!!! I can’t imagine that happening in Europe.

Bob, the only sad bit was… not a beer in sight. And though all the cows came over to see us we really didn’t fancy warm milk.

Day 23 June 22 122km; 26°C and overcast; 195M vertical

Weyburn to Carlyle. We left Weburn at 9:45 and headed east on Highway 13 again. For the first time ever we had a strong head wind from the south-east. Instead of cruising at 30kph we were cruising at 20kph. The forecast said a 11kph south east wind; the reality was a 30-40kph south east wind. We battled the wind all day and we had to stop more often than usual. We did see some bends in the road to help keep the excitement level up. We even saw a hillock in what has been our flattest stage to date. More interesting than the bends and hillock were the pump jacks we saw scattered all over the countryside. We do not know the volume of oil pumped but just from the number of pumps working the volume must be significant. Many farmers have the mineral rights on their land still and our making big money for every pump jack on their land. Sadly for those who feel their heating bills are too expensive, we saw several burn-offs scattered near the roadside making big flames and loud noises.