Rockies: Traveller Among Tourists

 Of all the places I was expecting to see in Canada, the Rockies were the place I was most looking forward to. I’d never seen anything like them before and anyone who’s ever seen them before has only ever said about how beautiful they are. There would also be the chance to see some new animals that I hadn’t seen before like bears, elk and mountain goats. While I was not only looking forward to seeing the mountains, I also was looking forward to getting the chance to ride through them. The flatness of the prairies had become a little boring by the end and I wanted the challenge of having to climb some proper mountain passes.

Prairies meeting the mountains

When I left Calgary, I saw the Bow River for the first time and got quite excited by it. The reason being that it had that turquoise colour that glacial lakes had and it was quite the thing seeing water that colour for the first time. Leaving Calgary, I had a bit more prairie to do. I knew it wasn’t too much though, as the further I went west, the closer the mountains that were in the distance started to get to me. After about 40km or so, I was entirely done with the prairie land, but not the weather I had been dealing with in them. A little before I reached the mountains, yet another thunderstorm popped up. This one was directly ahead of me as I was riding and dropped a lightning bolt in the exact direction I was going on the road maybe about 10-20km ahead of me. That was enough to spook me and pull off to hide under the nearest gas station until the storm passed by.

Amongst the mountains now

After having to wait to be among the mountains because of the storm, it took almost no time to start being among them after starting back up. I smiled the whole time after reaching them as they were breathtaking. These insanely huge peaks stood so high above me and there were just so many of them as I kept going. They were in every direction too as I became surrounded by them. All the water that I was seeing now was the turquoise blue colour and with mountains sitting right behind the water, it made for stunning views. I’m not one for taking photos much and there are things on the trip I wish I had taken photos of, but right now I couldn’t stop taking photos as everything just looked so stunning.

Bow River

Mountains behind a lake

My day of being amazed by the mountains would end in Canmore, where more thunderstorms greeted me. When there was a break in the storms, I rode up to the Nordic Center taking some mountain bike trails to get there (don’t take mountain bike trails going uphill with a loaded bike, it’s not fun). The Center gave me a view over Canmore and an even better view of the surrounding mountains since I was up higher now. In the evening as it was getting darker, I saw an elk for the first time and even got decently close to it.

Overlooking Canmore

While the prairies had essentially no bikers, the mountains are full of them. Due to this, there’s actually some bike infrastructure, including a path that goes all the way from Canmore to Banff. I rode the path in the morning leaving the rest of the day for something I had wanted to do in the mountains: climbing up a mountain. While I was in town figuring out where to go, I ran into a cyclist who was just about to start his trip. This was Lloyd and this was the starting point for him in his attempt to do the Great Divide (Banff to the Mexico border mostly along the mountains, it’s a very popular route). I figured out where I could hike up a mountain and headed to the base of the trail for Mt. Sulphur.

Along the ride from Canmore to Banff

The trail to get up Mt. Sulphur was in a park on the edge of Banff, so therefore had a lot of tourists in it. Luckily for me, the laziness of most people was to my advantage as the majority of them took a gondola up and down the mountain instead of taking the trail, making it far less busy on the way up and down. The trail up/down was nothing but a lot of switchbacks and the only view being the pine trees around you on the steep slope. The hour it took to go up wasn’t overly exciting but I was happy to have the experience in putting in the effort to climb up. As a side note, there are some comments I get quite often about how I must be in good shape for biking so much and one of them is about how good my cardio level must be. Well today I learned that it is indeed quite good, as I found myself easily overtaking tired hikers all the way up, while I kept my good pace the whole way up. Once I reached the end of the switchbacks, I was up with the tourists who had taken the gondola, but this wasn’t the end point.

The peak I stopped at

I guess everyone thought that where the gondola went was the summit, but it wasn’t. The real summit was another few kilometres hike and I wanted to go there. With everyone being oblivious, the way to the real summit was entirely empty to myself. This part was entirely different than the switchbacks and featured some up and downs that required more careful navigating. I did end up coming across one older couple though (Eric and Joanna) who were into doing more difficult hikes. Shortly after encountering Eric and Joanna, we reached a peak with an incredibly stunning view. I’m unable to post videos here but wish I could as it really was incredible. You could see about a kilometre down over the Bow River, the Trans Canada, Banff and the valley between the mountain I was on and its neighbour. This was the highest I’ve ever been as I was over 2300m in elevation. I ended up deciding to stop here, as the rest of the trail looked too sketchy for me and my inexperience in hiking mountains. I didn’t reach the highest summit of Mt. Sulphur, but I still did better than nearly everyone else and was well rewarded too. I watched Eric and Joanna as they kept going and thought about I was happy where I stopped when they very slowly and carefully were going across a ledge at one point. The hour back down wasn’t as fun but it was better than the gondola and I got to talk with some of the hikers who were going up.

View from the peak overlooking highway and river

Banff and the surrounding national parks in the mountains are quite strict about enforcing their rules, including on no wild camping. I considered the potential big fine I may face if caught wild camping not worth it and decided on using campgrounds for the rest of my time in the national parks. This decision would end up paying off right away. I found a campground with an open spot and went about my usual evening stuff. While I was there, a herd of elk came right through the section I was in and peacefully grazed, unafraid of all the campers who watched them. Also not long after I had gotten there, I saw a couple of cyclists going up the hill towards where you would enter the campground. I ran over to the ledge over the road and yelled over to them, inviting them to my spot if they didn’t have one yet. They did not and a couple minutes later found my spot. This was Carsten and Isabell from Germany, who had just finished cycling the Great Divide going from Mexico to Banff. They’re on a year long sabbatical and have been travelling all over before starting the biking portion (they have their own blog about all of their journeys if you’re interested: https://findpenguins.com/6p4ifepvipw1o) We got talking before dark while I made my supper and figured out that we were heading in the same direction, so decided we’d cycle together when we left in the morning.

We rode out of Banff towards Lake Louise on an alternate to the main highway, which was much nicer as there were far less vehicles, letting us talk as we rode. The other nice thing was that we rode at about the same pace (although Isabell was a bit slower on uphills), which made it even better to ride with them. We just rode to Lake Louise for a shorter day as we planned to get very early the next morning to ride into see the lakes before they were stuffed full of tourists. The day overall hadn’t had much happen other than the campground fiasco.

When we arrived in Lake Louise, Carsten asked at the visitor centre about camping. They told him that the main campground would be full and not even to bother trying to get a spot. So we went to the campground with the plan to ask if we could share a spot with someone who was already there. After a little while of asking, a Turkish woman and her mother said yes and we sent up our tents there. A little while later, a ranger or staff member who was inspecting the campground, said we couldn’t camp where we were, as we weren’t on the main camp spot. He was nice and told us that there may be an open spot and to go ask at the entrance (we didn’t enter the main way). So I went and found out there was an open spot and got it for us. By the time I got back though, the situation had changed. Another person of power, like the guy I had talked with, who was not so nice, told Carsten and Isabell that we had to move/pack up immediately (the nice guy was fine with letting me go and come back and then doing something). She forced them to move and during this, a camp spot right next to where we were, saw and invited us to move our tents there. So they did and when I got back, I found out I no longer needed the spot I got as we had a new one. So I went and got a refund for the spot. However, a while later while I was showering, the cranky woman came back around and now was telling everyone that the situation was no good and needed something to be done with right away. This time because there were too many tents (3, apparently max 2) and that the people who had the spot for the night couldn’t have their tent where they did because it wasn’t in the right spot. So then Isabell had to go get the spot again that I had gotten earlier. While she did that, the people who let us camp with them helped us move. Our new spot was on the other side of the campground and we already had our tents up and everything we’d want in them for the night, so packing would be a pain. The people in the spot though had a truck and offered to put our tents on the back of the truck and move them to the new spot. We accepted the offered and got all of us stuff moved to the new spot. Finally, everyone was satisfied now and we could just relax for the rest of the day.

Fog in the mountains in early morning to Lake Moraine

We were up very early, around 5 in the morning and left the campsite before 6. We headed towards Lake Louise and Lake Moraine with the goal to try to get into the lakes before they were full of tourists. We decided to head to Lake Moraine first, since people aren’t allowed to drive their vehicles in and instead have to take shuttles, there would likely be less people there than Louise. While it was only an 11km ride into the lake from where cars were denied access, it still took us a while as the ride was mostly a climb. It was absolutely worth it though, both putting in the effort and leaving as early as we did. The lake was beautiful and the earliest shuttles had only just beaten us there, leading to not many others being there and us being able to enjoy it more peacefully than we otherwise would’ve. A little after we got there, someone had already gotten a kayak in the water. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me but it just seems a bit sad that you can’t enjoy something beautiful like that without people having go in it and disturb it like that, especially since it’s such a well known spot that so many people want to see in its full beauty. The lake was beautiful with its turquoise colour and we spent a bit of time there appreciating it before heading back to see Lake Louise. I think Lake Louise actually looked slightly nicer than Moraine, however it was packed full of tourists and people out in kayaks by the time we made it there. It almost felt hard to even be able to enjoy it at all like that.

Lake Moraine

Me, Isabell and Carsten at Lake Moraine

Back in the town, Carsten and Isabell met up with Jack and his wife Maureen. They met Jack earlier in their trip and had helped him out after he had accident. Jack and Maureen planned on joining us for the day, as we started riding the Icefields Parkway. They brought lots of food for Carsten and Isabell and even let me have some of it too. Jack and Maureen had something I’d never seen in person before, that being a bike for two and that’s what they’d be riding for the day.

Isabell, Carsten, Maureen and Jack

Icefields Parkway was definitely a suitable for the route. Basically as soon as we turned onto the route, we started seeing the mountains had plenty of glaciers. They were stunning and had us all stopping regularly to take photos and just marvel at them. Jack and Maureen had ridden this stretch multiple times before and knew of everything there was to see, making sure we didn’t miss anything. The colours of all the water we saw was the pristine turquoise we had seen but even better here. As the water here was mostly all melted from the glaciers we were staring at, I think it helped make the colour sharper than what I had seen the past few days. I think the best of them all was at Peyto Lake, where we would split up from Jack and Maureen and where I had finished climbing my first ever mountain pass. After seeing Lake Peyto, Jack and Maureen turned back, while the 3 of us got to coast down the other side of the pass to a campground where we would stop.

Isabell, Carsten and me

Me, Isabell and Carsten at Bow Glacier

My first mountain pass complete

Peyto Lake

The morning felt very cold when we all got up. The higher elevations of the Rockies result in the temperatures being quite a bit cooler than whatever it is like in surrounding areas. I had gone from regular days in the prairies being 30 or more degrees, to now having temperatures drop as low as 5 degrees in a matter of a few days. For the first time in my life, in the middle of summer with it being August, I was actively using my winter jacket. Even though it was a sharp change and I definitely felt cold at times, I was enjoying having the change temperature from the heat I was used to.

Mountain

We had wanted to see the Columbia Icefields in the day (and that was as far north as any of us intended to go) and there were no campgrounds up that way it looked like we could depend on, so we dropped off a lot of our stuff at a different campground earlier in the day with the hopes of finding a spot when we made it back later. It was yet another day of stunning mountains, glaciers, lakes and rivers. We had another mountain pass to do and this one was much tougher. The pass we had gone over the day before left me a bit disappointed, as I had an expectation of how tough it would be to do a pass and it wasn’t near as difficult as I imagined. The one today though matched my expectations as it was a continuously long and at times steep route that would take a few hours to climb up. By the time I reached the top, I felt good and tired but able to be proud of what I had just climbed. The other cool thing about the pass we climbed today, was the change in watersheds that came with it. I had been cycling in watersheds that went to the Arctic Ocean via Hudson Bay since a little after Thunder Bay, but now the water would flow all the way north to the Arctic Ocean by the McKenzie River.

Overlooking highway and mountains in clouds

After a bit of a break at the top of the pass, Carsten and Isabell caught up with me and we rode down to the Columbia Icefields. All the glaciers we had seen up to now were up near the peaks of the mountains, but now we were looking at a glacier that was down at ground level with us. Not only that, but there were 2 more glaciers on each side of the low glacier. Being able to see the 3 glaciers at once was incredible. Carsten and Isabell had hiked on a glacier before, so they decided to head back while I went out to hike on the glacier. It was impressive how large it was when I had made it up to it. I got to walk on it for a little but didn’t get to explore as much as I wanted since it was getting later and I decided to head back. 

Athabasca Glacier at Columbia Icefield

Me on the glacier

The reward for climbing the pass early in the day was being able to coast back down for a good chunk of the way back. There was even a stretch on steeper, twistier parts of the road where I was able to overtake some vehicles which felt pretty cool to do. I fully expected to find Carsten and Isabell would be back at camp well over an hour before I would make it back, so I was quite surprised to see Carsten on the side of the road as I was whipping down a hill. He was on the side of a very steep hill and as I stopped to turn around to go back to him, my mind started thinking something very bad must have happened and one of them must have fallen over the hill. When I got back to Carsten, luckily everything was alright. Turns out, they had decided to take a side trail that wasn’t so fun to ride and it had lead them to a dead end. They didn’t want to go back and to get back on the road, they would have to try to get their bikes all the way back up the steep embankment of the side of the road. I helped them get the bikes back up but Carsten’s chain had somehow gotten very badly jammed in the ordeal. It took a good amount of finagling and yanking, but we got it back in place and then we were able to ride back to camp together.

While our stuff was back at camp, we still didn’t have a spot to camp for the night when we got there. It was another camp that required reservations (which is essentially impossible to plan when travelling by bike), so we had to ask around to see if anyone would share their spot. Right away when we started asking, we met with a yes. Francois and Marianne, a couple from France, were happy to let us  camp next to them and share our travel experiences.

We chatted with Francois and Marianne more in the morning before saying goodbye, as they left before us. It wouldn’t be the final goodbye though. Unfortunately, my time with Carsten and Isabell had come to an end as well. We hadn’t known how long we’d be together as none of us had known the route we planned on taking after seeing Columbia Icefields. The day before though we figured them out though and this would be our splitting point, as I would head south off of some recommendations I had gotten, while they would head east before going to Calgary. I had really enjoyed my time with them over the 3+ days we spent together. I also knew I had made new friends that I expect will be a part of my future. We also all planned on being in Vancouver in the near future and had the hope that our paths may cross again while there. We said a sad goodbye but I was confident we’d be reunited soon, which made it a bit easier to split up.

Now that I was back on my own again, I planned on backtracking the past few days of riding so I could start going further south. I got to do the other side of my first mountain pass and this side was definitely more difficult than the side I had first ridden. I got all the backtracking I would need to do in just the day and I even got to see a little bit of new towards the end of the day. I made it back south of the Icefields Parkway and then also halfway back between Lake Louise and Banff before starting back on seeing new stuff. I didn’t get much further south in the day, but did have to climb another mountain pass to make it to camp. This one wasn’t as long but made up for it by being steeper than the previous ones I had climbed. Climbing a second pass in a day was definitely tiring but provided me with a couple of significant surprises I wasn’t expecting. The first of those being that this pass marked the continental divide, meaning that all water I encountered now would flow to the Pacific Ocean. The other being that I had now finished my time in Alberta as this was the border with BC, my final province of Canada. I had no idea I was about to cross into my final province but when I realized I had made it here, I started celebrating and even ended up shedding a couple tears of happiness as I was incredibly proud of myself for how far I had come. I got to coast down to my campground for the night and eagerly started to think about crossing the final province of my cross Canada trip.

BC border

Continental divide

Distance Biked: 588.3km

Total Distance Biked: 7467.4km

The Generous Praries

 While everywhere I’ve been on the trip, people have been very nice to me, I think the people from the prairies are probably the most generous and friendly of them all. Anytime I interact with anyone, they’re always super friendly and some have even given me money already in my short time in the prairies. The drivers are by far the most generous of any I’ve come across. While earlier in the trip, I would get the occasional honk of support, prairie drivers don’t honk and instead wave to me and a lot of them too. I was probably getting about a hundred or so waves a day which is a lot. Even better than that was how they drove around me. Most drivers going past me would entirely drive on the other side of the road when passing and sometimes drivers going the other way would drive on the shoulder when going by, as if to make sure they’re giving me as much space as possible to be safe. This is a stark contrast to everywhere before, where I’d say about 50% of the drivers passing me drive as if I wasn’t there and the other half would cross the median to give me more space, but nothing near like the space prairie drivers were giving me. As fantastic and kind that the people from the prairies had been to me, they’d keep it up and maybe even surpass this as I continued passing through.

View over Horizon (ghost town)

The generosity would continue after my night at Rod and Sharon’s in Weyburn. In the morning, Sharon made breakfast for me and then I talked with both Rod and Sharon some more as well. I got to try saskatoon berries for the first time the prior evening, but they were frozen and I was hoping to get to try some fresh ones at some point. So Sharon recommended me to stop at a saskatoon berry farm in Trossachs, that I’d pass later in the day. Before leaving, Rod and Sharon even gave me $50, just like the other very kind people from the prairies had been doing as well.

View over the prairies

Around noon time I made it to the saskatoon berry farm in Trossachs that Sharon had recommended me. One of the owners of the place (Larissa), greeted me as I pulled up. She was quite surprised and curious why I was there as she told me that no one had ever come to their place before on a bike. When I told her I had been recommended her place for saskatoon berries, she lead me back to the saskatoon bushes and let me start picking, even encouraging me to snack on some as I picked. When I got done picking what I wanted and could carry with me (it was probably about 2lbs worth), I went back out front to find Larissa so I could pay for them. When I did though, Larissa told me I could keep what I picked for free. Not only that, but she even gave me a cold bottle of water (it was a very hot day) and a pack of freeze dried skittles to take too. We got talking and it turns out we both had mental health problems before and both gone through quite a bit to overcome them. She had found religion in doing so and believed that we were supposed to meet, that being part of the reason she let me have the berries (and she was also just incredibly nice).

My saskatoon berries

After the stop at Larissa’s saskatoon berry farm, I continued back to fighting the wind on the hot day. I’d make it to Ogema for the day, passing more ghost towns along the way. I didn’t know it at first, but turns out the route I was on (The Red Coat Trail), is also known as the ghost town highway. This being because there used to be a railway that ran roughly along the highway, that was largely used for transporting grain. Every town/village had large grain elevators along the still remaining tracks. Sometimes you would see the grain elevators in what seemed like the middle of nowhere as there used to be a village there. Some of the ghost towns are completely gone, with only a monument left behind as the buildings either burnt in a fire, got moved away or both. Others would still have some buildings, but not near as many as there would’ve been at the villages’ peaks. Usually a couple of them would still be lived in but the rest looked abandoned or fallen apart.

Leaving Ogema, there was nothing in between until Assiniboia, which would take me the day to get there. The land was starting to change now as it was no longer purely flat and instead I was now riding through rolling hills of fields. This meant that I started seeing some fields with cattle in them instead of just purely crop fields. It was yet another very hot day of fighting headwinds. To make it worse though (and maybe I just hadn’t been noticing it until now), was the added wind that the oncoming traffic was causing. Nearly every vehicle in the prairies is some form of truck. Could be an 18 wheeler, dump truck, oil truck or pickup truck, but almost always some form of truck. The thing about trucks with their bigger frames, is that they move a lot more air than a car. So every time I encountered a truck going opposite of me, it would hit me with a big gust of wind that would nearly kill my momentum and have to work back up to speed. Dealing with this was actually worse than the constant wind that I would otherwise have been dealing with as at least I’m not constantly having to basically start back up from not moving. From this day on, this was something that was constantly happening while I was still in the prairies, I just must have been ignorant of it earlier on. It wasn’t just me either, later on when Abraham (guy I rode with for a couple days in Ontario), made it to the prairies, he told me that he also had the same problem with the trucks making gusts of wind.

Rolling hills

After a hot day that felt like it took quite a bit out of me, I made it to Assiniboia and got a slushy to help cool down. I then found a park where I was going to stop and cook supper, when to my surprise, there was already another biker there. This was Brian who was riding from Vancouver to his hometown of Niagara. Brian had been living in Vancouver but was soon moving to New Zealand, so was now riding to Niagara before flying to New Zealand. Both of us were done riding for the day, so we ended up chatting for the rest of the day before we found a camp spot to setup our tents together. Unfortunately for Brian, his stomach wasn’t feeling well when I met him and it hadn’t improved over night. So when I ended up leaving him in the morning, he’d be staying in town and grabbed a motel for the day.

While Brian was left behind not having such a good day, I continued on having a pretty good day. The wind was with me and there wasn’t too much traffic this day, making the riding quite enjoyable. I even saw a couple of new animals along the way. I saw what I assume was a burrowing owl on the side of the road, with its wings fully extended out sunbathing them. As I went by it, it stayed there but rotated its head fully around to watch me go by. Later on when I stopped at an abandoned baseball field in a ghost town, I saw a jackrabbit hopping away. I made it to Cadillac to end the day where my timing was a little poor. The local fair was going on right when I arrived, making the village loud and full of people when I’m sure it otherwise would’ve been mostly empty and quiet with a free campground to use. Instead I found an abandoned school on the other side (which was like 3 streets) of the village to camp next to for a little shelter for the thunderstorms that rolled through in the night again. There were coyotes howling too and while I’ve heard them plenty of times, when combined with the thunderstorms, doesn’t lead to the best of easy sleeping.

Never ending road

Leaving Cadillac, the land went from rolling hills to proper hills and I had to give actual effort again to ride up them. Early in the day I met Scott from Saskatchewan who’s riding across his home province and had just started the day before. I also came across the most weird and probably most famous ghost town during my time in Saskatchewan in Scotsguard. The buildings there had been restored and look like new except they’re not used or lived in except for one household. I had another new animal sighting too, in getting to see my first pronghorn a little off the road in a field eating. I would end the day in Shaunovan, finding cover from more thunderstorms and also prepared to start seeing some new landscapes tomorrow.

Scotsguard monument

Earlier during my time in Saskatchewan, I had heard of Cypress Hills and decided I wanted to check them out. They’re the highest point between the Rockie Mountains and Labrador and also supposed to have excellent nighttime viewing of the stars. As I had been starting to near them, it probably makes sense that it was hilly now.

A while before I had made it to Shaunovan the previous day, I had started to see large hills out in the distance. While I’m not sure that they’re technically part of Cypress Hills or whatever that whole formation would be, I do know that they were definitely the hills that formed the Frenchman Valley. Before I started to enter the valley in Eastend, I started coming across these steep hills that were scattered about in every direction. They almost seemed like they wanted to be mountains towering over the area but just didn’t have the size. 

Hills entering Eastend

Before I could started exploring the valley, Eastend had its own attraction worth visiting, that being a fossil museum. The museum is technically free but they do ask for a donation. While Alberta is known as the main part of Canada for fossils, this part of Saskatchewan in the Frenchman Valley basically matches it. The main reason there’s a fossil museum in Eastend, which isn’t very large or near anything of size, is due to the fact that the largest T. rex ever found was found around here and now houses it too. While Scotty the T. rex was the main attraction, the museum did have other cool fossils too like a triceratops skull and a type of ancient North American rhino too.

Scotty the T. rex

Triceratops

Rhino

Leaving Eastend and its museum, I got to start exploring the valley. I’d been on the Redcoat Trail the whole time in Saskatchewan but now was leaving it for the gravel roads towards Cypress Hills that rarely had any traffic on them. I really didn’t know anything about the area I was about to ride into (or even that there was valley here, it’s purely coincidence I ended up here), but it ended up being one of the most stunning areas I’ll probably pass through on the whole trip. All of the land was still pasture land with some cows spread about here and there. While there was the occasional farm or similar buildings, I’m not sure anyone actually lived here and instead travel to their land when they need to. The fields extended up the hills that made up the valley, at least where vegetation could grow on the hills. The hills looked more like mountains and were striped with different colours fron the different periods of which the hills must have been formed. I’d watched a video of someone riding through pastureland in the Andes before and this truly reminded me of that.

Frenchman Valley

The climb near Ravenscrag (another ghost town) to get up the hills and out of the valley was a very steep and hard one but presented its own new landscape. I was now over 1000m elevation for the first time ever (not counting planes) and it seemed like it too. The air while not too different, could be noticed that it was slightly thinner. Again everything around me now was pastureland for cows to roam but it looked so different now. I’m not sure how entirely to describe them, but they also just had a look to them that they were at a higher elevation. The land here also gave a bit of an illusion that it was flat when it was not and rather was more like the rolling hills I encountered earlier in the province. Getting to ride the valley and now the hilly pastures with essentially no one around was incredibly fun for the day.

I would end up reaching the end of the wonderful area where it was just me and got back to a main road that was lived on again before reaching Cypress Hills. One final climb did get me up to Cypress Hills park soon after. Luckily I got my tent up shortly after getting there, as unsurprisingly at this point, thunderstorms started rolling in. After it got dark and there was a break in the thunderstorms, I went for a little walk. While there was no thunderstorm overhead at the moment, there were thunderstorms in every direction and it was quite the sight as I watched the clouds constantly light up. 

Foraging rewards

The storms would come back during the night but were done by the morning, which was good for my plans. I planned on spending another night here and exploring the park during the day and then getting a view of the stars at night. When making breakfast, I noticed a bird eating a berry off a nearby bush and decided to check it out. I ended finding quite a few wild raspberry bushes and some saskatoon ones too. I spent about an hour picking what I could find and had enough for my breakfast oatmeal both today and tomorrow. During the day I went for a hike to the high point in the park, where there and along the way, were some really nice look off spots. I was able to see the next town I’d cycle through (Maple Creek) about 30km away and in general could see very far (likely over 50km) from my view point. Apparently on clear days (it was a little smoky) you can see about 100km in the distance I think. I also had the high point to myself as you had hike out to it and no one seemed willing to put in effort to do anything. I was in a nature park where I would think people would want to go hike and explore and not one person hiked to see the views. A couple used e-bikes but everyone else drove their cars there which I think is just pathetic in all honestly. 

View from Cypress Hills

I try not to rant on the blog here much (there will be a very large one in the future when I get to BC) and keep it just to my experiences, but I have to say, the pure laziness of people that I’ve witnessed on this trip is truly astounding. The total lack of effort and pure want of ease that so many people seem to want in all aspects of their lives, truly is sad from my perspective.

Later in the day, after the hike when I was back at my tent, another camper (Rod) came by and invited me over to his spot later in the evening when he was making lamb burgers. I spent the evening over with Rod and had the burger plus he gave me a bubly and let me have some chips too. Rod was quite interesting. He was from Saskatchewan but has lived in Thailand for 35 years and done lots of travelling over the years. I got up around midnight to see the night sky but was left a little disappointed. The view was good but not really any better than what I’d see back home on the hill on our farm. What I really wanted to see was a more well defined Milky Way belt, which I didn’t get, but the view was still nice nonetheless.

My time passing through the Frenchman Valley and being in Cypress Hills had gotten me really excited to make it to the Rockies and start exploring the mountains.  With the wind supposed to be with me the next few days, I planned on fully taking advantage of it. I had enjoyed the prairies until now, but I was ready for a change of scenery and the flat prairie lands were starting to grow a little boring.

Since I had to do a bunch of climbing to make it to Cypress Hills, I was rewarded with a big descent when I left them. I got to drop over 500m of elevation down to Maple Creek on a road that was a steady descent down the whole way. Getting to fly down to Maple Creek was incredibly fun as I averaged over 31km/h for the near hour of descending. Not long after I passed Maple Creek, I reached the Alberta  border and entered another new province. Stopped at the rest area at the border, was another cyclist who I stopped to talk with. This was Nico from Germany, who had started in San Diego, rode up the Pacific coast and now was riding east to Toronto. A bit later on I came across my first long distance hiker. This was Rakesh who was walking from Vancouver to Toronto for mental health awareness. I made a lot of progress during the day like I hoped and would end the day in Medicine Hat.

Alberta border

Me and Rakesh

Leaving Medicine Hat, I was welcomed with more stinky oil fields and a hot 30+ degree day (at least I still had tailwind). I had done over 100km by the early afternoon. Since there was still plenty of day left, I kept pushing on but the longer distance from the previous day and what I had already done today made the rest of the day feel much more difficult. I would end the day in Bassano. 

While I was looking around for a place to eat and camp for the night, a car stopped and asked if I was looking for a camping spot (people from the prairies seemed to always know I was on a long distance bike trip). When I said yes, she (Connie) offered to let me stay at her place for the night. She was currently on her way to her friends place and invited me to come along, saying she’s invited people over to her friends before like this. I followed along and was welcomed by all of her fellow teacher friends. Not only did they all not mind me there, they also even invited me to join in the cooked supper they were all going to have (and encouraged me to have extras which I happily did). Before leaving to go to Connie’s place for the night, Les, the husband of the friends house, gave me some money to take with. I didn’t really look at what he gave me right away but it looked like a couple 20’s. Well, turns out when I pulled the bills out of my pocket later, he had actually given me more than I thought, as it was $100 worth of 20’s,which was insanely generous of him. When I got to Connie’s, I got to shower before getting to sleep on my first proper mattress since I last got a hotel room in Bathurst, New Brunswick.

Connie took me out to a diner for breakfast in the morning. I hadn’t really gotten the chance to properly talk one on one with her yet since it was late when we got to her place and we both went to bed almost immediately. Turns out Connie is actually taking a break from work and planning to travel for the next year. She’s actually moving out of her place and leaving to start travelling up to Yukon only a couple days after I met her, so I timing truly was amazing. She had most of the next year planned out already with plans to see South America, Central America, India and maybe even more.

I left Connie and Bassano to another really hot day with Calgary in sight now, which is where the transition from prairies to mountains starts to get closer. I was back on the highway the past couple days and while it had busy, as I grew closer to Calgary it kept getting even busier. After listening to the roar of cars all day and staring at the same fields I had been for the past couple weeks, I made it to Chestermere, which is basically on the edge of Calgary. In Chestermere, I got to cool down in a lake for the first time since I left Ontario which felt so good after another long hot day of sweating. 

Approaching Calgary

I ended up spending the weekend in Calgary, seeing the city some. I saw downtown including the island park and its walking streets. It also came another thunderstorm while I was there (it felt like my whole time in the prairies was full of nothing but thunderstorms). I got my chain swapped out and got new brake pads in anticipation I’d be wearing through my current ones much faster once I reached the mountains. When I made it to the western part of the city, I could see the peaks of the Rockie Mountains for the first time, which got me very excited. On my final evening there, I got to see my cousin Matt who had been out of the city until then. We went out to a restaurant together  and got to talk about our travel stories.

Rockie mountains outline

When I previewed the prairies, I talked about how people seemed to really like or dislike their time in the prairies, I’m happy to say that I really enjoyed my time there. It was very different from anywhere I’d been before and the people there were fantastic. Next up though is the mountains, which is the area I had most been looking forward to seeing in all of Canada. If the sneak peak I was seeing from Calgary was any indication, I was about to be in for a real treat.

Distance Biked: 986.4km

Total Distance Biked: 6879.1km

Flat Lands

Based on what I’ve heard about the prairies, whether that’s from cyclists I’ve met on the trip, research I did before the trip or just heard elsewhere, the prairies seem to be a place that is either enjoyed or hated. For those that like them, they enjoy flat roads, get to ride fast and usually have some nice tailwinds that push them along. Plus they enjoyed their time getting to be around the farmers, which I’ve heard are incredibly friendly out there. For those that didn’t like the prairies, the landscape was boring seeing the same thing everyday, the flatness was stale and didn’t provide the entertainment that hills can and another common thing I’ve heard was that they found the prairies very hard on them mentally. I was looking forward to the prairies and hoping to mimic the positive experiences minus the wind (the good tailwind was because everyone rides west to east unlike me and the prairies are notorious for their winds, so I was expecting to get blasted regularly). Plus with the prairies being brand new to me, the landscape hopefully shouldn’t be boring, at least to start I hoped. Making it to Richer had brought me to the edge of the prairies and now I was ready to fully experience them.

Before I left Richer, while at the gas station  there, a man gave me $20. I was quite surprised as we hardly had a conversation and I can’t even remember what I told him.  I think the extent of the conversation may have been him asking where I was riding to and that was basically it, with him pulling out a $20 bill right after I answered.

Well with the day of to a good start, I was now looking forward to reaching proper prairie land. Richer is still forest but with some fields mixed in. There was a strong wind which was mostly at my side but partially against me. It really wasn’t enough to slow me down at all as I’d grown used to riding in wind that had much bigger effect than that, at least that was the case until I left the forest. It didn’t take me long until after starting to clear the last forest I’d see for quite a while. When I did make it past the forest and into prairie land, the math on the wind entirely changed. It was still just as strong and in the same direction, but I no longer had any protection from the trees and was out in the wide open. While the wind was only partly against me, with me no longer having any protection from the trees, it just started blasting me and slowed me down to a crawl. My excitement for the prairies was starting to quickly die down with the thought of having to fight headwinds like this for weeks. 

A river/canal cutting through fields

While the wind was putting a damper on my mood, I was still happy and excited to see the prairies for the first time. I was here the right time of year to see the fields looking there best. In every direction I looked, was green fields as far as the eye could see with the only exception being the yellow fields of canola. I think what amazed me most was just how far you could see in any direction because of how flat the land was. Looking out over the ocean, you can only see part of a ship once it’s sailed out far enough due to the curvature of the Earth. Well I could see far enough out over the flat fields that the same phenomenon was happening with distant objects like radio towers or the odd tree.

After staring out over the fields all day at my slowed down pace due to the wind, I did make it to Winnipeg which felt like the true start to the prairies in my mind. Riding through Winnipeg for the first time was interesting to say the least. I didn’t really know much about the city, so it was a surprise to me when I first arrived and I found myself riding through streets lined with trees, that had me thinking this might be the nicest city I’ve come across before. I only had to do a little more riding to downtown for me to quickly change my mind. The streets of downtown were lined full of homeless people to the point that no other pedestrians could even be found on these streets, as they were surely avoiding them. The businesses through the area seemed to be either dead or dying due to this problem too. I even saw someone on the ground snorting a line of something while riding through the downtown streets.

Winnipeg was the last place I’d come across in Canada where I had a friend I knew I was going to stop and see. This would be Jedri but I made it to Winnipeg while Jedri was still working. Since Jedri was still working, I kept riding to the part of the city that he lives in and found a library to wait at until he was done. Within about 5 minutes of me sitting down in the library, I heard the librarians on a microphone asking for the owner of the bike in the parking lot to come to the front of the library. I had no idea what this was going to be about but I went up and asked about why they were calling me up. Well to my surprise, the librarian informed me that someone had just tried to steal my bike. Luckily someone in the parking lot scared them away while they were doing it and then told the librarian. When I went out to check the bike, I found that my lock was about 80% of the way cut through. Luckily nothing was stolen though. The librarian let me keep it in the library after the incident. Maybe I had gotten too comfortable trusting people on the trip, that I had gotten that I don’t always watch over my bike, as I regularly don’t need to. This unfortunately made me lose some of that trust now and I keep a much stricter watch over the bike now, particularly in cities. The other thing I would soon learn is that Winnipeg in general has a very large stolen bike problem with signs in certain areas even saying that those areas are high bike theft areas. Well it’s safe to say now, other than my very brief liking of Winnipeg when I first entered, it was off to a very bad start for me.

What’s left of my lock

My time in Winnipeg would start to turn around however, starting with getting to see Jedri. I rode to his place after he finished work and then he took me to a nicer spot in the city where the rivers meet. After grabbing some food, we went back to his place and I got to bake both peanut butter and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

I got to see probably the nicest part of Winnipeg the next day, that being Assiniboine Park. It was just a nice big park that was full of different stuff, which was just nice to go around and explore and see. After spending a bunch of the day there, me and Jedri went back to his place later on. Also when I was at Jedri’s, I got to try some phillipino food, all of which was really good (especially the morning sausages).

While it was nice getting to spend some time with Jedri, I didn’t really want to stay in Winnipeg for long. So after a good day off, I was back on the road. I had been unsure on the route I was planning to take after I left Winnipeg. I had been considering just staying on the Trans Canada highway. I’d been riding the highway for quite a while now, it was divided making it a bit safer, the shoulders were better and most of tue long distance cyclists I’d met had taken the highway and told me it wasn’t bad. However, while I was in Winnipeg, I asked around to others cyclists and the bike shop I went to, what they would suggest for a route and all of them gave the same response. That being a less busy route going south. After thinking it over, I decided to take the more southern route that would hopefully have less traffic. I’d spent enough time on the highway, that I had forgotten how much I prefer quieter roads with less traffic but I’d some remember after I got south Winnipeg.

Leaving Winnipeg, I was now entering prairie lands permanently for the next few weeks. I got to see them a little before Winnipeg but now I was fully experiencing them. Roads were straight for long stretches with me not needing to change my direction for long periods. The wind would be pretty consistent in a single direction for much of the day. The roads were flat and surrounded by fields in every direction with the only buildings and trees being found were those on farmyards. I was no longer even needing to change my gears and instead would ride in the same pattern undisturbed. Villages were regular, on average maybe being 15-20kms apart. When you left one village, you would very soon see the next one out in the distance and stare at it for sometimes close to an hour before you would reach it.

As much as everything was changing, I was quite enjoying it. There were still cars, but much less, making the riding more enjoyable. I liked stopping in the small villages. They were often quite quiet and provided me a relaxing spot to stop for a bit. Staring out into the abyss of fields made it feel like I had entered into a whole new country instead of this still being Canada. My day of being enamoured by everything changing would end in Carman.

Flat road and land that just keeps going

Camping in villages was my only option now as all other land were fields. Luckily I would be mostly coming across these small villages which had a few advantages. The people were always friendly and never had a problem camping. You could almost always find some sort of open space that was either unused or near a quiet building. I also never felt a worry that someone would bother me, I was taking a risk camping somewhere or that I may get in trouble for doing something. This would start with Carman where I camped at the empty exhibition grounds.

The route that I had been recommended was highway 3, but I’d be leaving it today and instead taking the 23 and for good reason. Along the 23 is Baldur, which was my destination for the day. We have mammoth donkeys at home and one of them had come from a mammoth donkey ranch in Baldur. While none of my family had ever met the ranch owners (Ron and Suzanne), my parents had always kept in touch with them since we got the donkey. When they had heard that I was potentially passing by, they offered me to come by along the way and I had decided to take them up on the offer.

My decision to veer off to Baldur was absolutely the right one. While the 3 was quieter than the main highway, the 23 had very little traffic. There would be periods over the next few days on the route where I would go up to 10 minutes without encountering a single car from either direction. It truly felt like the road was mine at times. The wind was also slightly in my favour heading to Baldur too, letting me consistently ride at a faster pace all day. I even took a couple of longer breaks and really just moved at the rhythm that I felt like for the whole day.

A look out over the fields from a slight hill

Once I reached Baldur, I found my way to Ron and Suzanne’s. Their place is hidden over a hill, making their place even nicer once you were there. There were over 20 huge donkeys out in their pastures which I started to see right away after getting up the hill. When I got there, they invited to me to take part in a parade that would be happening the next day. They also told me that they had setup an interview for the local newspaper about me for that evening. I gave it a little thought, but considering I want to learn to say yes to new experiences, I accepted the invite to be a part of the parade.

Big Ears Donkey Ranch

I got my tent setup for the next couple nights and then was invited in. I got to shower and do proper laundry for the first time since Waterloo. While I did that stuff, Suzanne made me supper (she kept me very well fed while I was there). After talking and eating for a while, Gayle came over to do the interview for the newspaper. Turns out doing an interview isn’t hard when the questions are the same things you get asked most days by all the different people I meet. Around dusk I got to help round up all the donkeys back to their pens. I even got to meet Elmer, a 2 week old donkey who was much smaller than the rest of them.

Some of the donkeys

For the parade, I’d be joining Ron on a cart that would be getting pulled around by a pair of donkeys (Rusty and Adeline). We got the donkeys and cart loaded up in the morning and headed to Cypress River where the parade and local exhibition was going to be held. I also got to help saddle the donkeys so that they could pull the cart. The pair of donkeys were both in their later years now that they were in their 20’s. Ron had been taking Rusty and Adeline around for about 20 years to different events, so they were very well trained and familiar with what they’d be doing today. Unfortunately for them, this would be there last time getting to pull the cart, even though it seemed like something they liked to do. We were the last spot in the parade and the donkeys were no longer able to keep up with the rest of the floats as their age was catching up to them. They got most of the way around the little village before Ron decided to let them end early as they were getting tired on the hot day and Adeline’s one hoof seemed to be bothering her some towards the end. It was definitely a unique experience that I wasn’t expecting to happen on the trip but something I’m happy I got to do.

On the cart with Rusty and Adeline

We got Rusty and Adeline back to the ranch by the early afternoon and they were able to rest after that. We also rested after that too as it was the sort of hot, muggy day that just sapped you of your energy. I helped herd the donkeys again in the evening and got a couple more large meals from Suzanne before leaving the next day. Before leaving, Ron even gave me $20 as he told me how him and Suzanne had been very happy to meet me.

Leaving Baldur, the weather was pretty good for me. It had rained over night and still was when I left in the morning but that helped keep it cooler for me to ride. Not only that, but I even had a tailwind behind me. The wind was so good with the flat road that had very little traffic, that I had what was probably my highest average pace for a day on the trip in going 24.5km/hr. It let me go along so well that I nearly finished crossing Manitoba, which I wasn’t expecting to do in the day.

Canola fields

I knew there was a chance of encountering rain in the evening and was hoping to stop before anything happened. With how well I was moving along though I decided to ride into the evening. I was only expecting that it might come light rain if anything happened, but I was starting to notice some pretty dark looking clouds to the south. A little after that, there started to get to be some pretty dark clouds ahead of me too. I made it to Pipestone and found a picnic shelter to stop at. About 5 minutes after getting there, the clouds made it overhead and a big thunderstorm started up. I got pretty lucky finding the shelter when I did as the wind picked way up, it downpoured and there was thunder and lightning for about an hour before the storm passed. With the land being so open and flat, I was able to watch the storm as it kept going east beyond me, which was quite the thing to watch.

Double rainbow behind the thunderstorm in Pipestone

It rained overnight and the wind shifted back against me by the morning. My body felt a bit tired from the day before and with fighting the wind too, I didn’t go overly far in the day and took plenty of breaks. Before I made it to Saskatchewan, I started seeing oil derricks for the first time and I would keep seeing them for a little while in Saskatchewan too. Partway through the day I did end up crossing into Saskatchewan and in doing so, was now in my 4th timezone (Saskatchewan is central but doesn’t daylight savings so is actually the same as mountain in the summer). Crossing Ontario had taken over a month but Manitoba took just a week, to help give perspective on just how long Ontario is. While my route in Manitoba had been good because the roads were quiet, the roads didn’t have a shoulder for me to ride on. This changed as soon as I crossed into  Saskatchewan, as the roads then immediately started to have shoulders. Soon after celebrating the start of a new province, I decided to stop for the day in Redvers. As I arrived in Redvers, I met a cyclist for the first time since I had left Ontario. This time it was Dominick from Austria who was doing the cross Canada trip from Vancouver to Halifax.

Saskatchewan border

Oil field

When I left Redvers, I got more into the oil fields and learned that they stunk. I don’t know how anyone could live near them. The wind couldn’t make up its mind which way it wanted to blow, so I had to adjust to it throughout the day. Not much happened of interest until I neared Stoughton where I’d stop for the day. As I got nearer to Stoughton, I saw a weird shape in the clouds, but hadn’t seen anything in the weather about storms so just assumed the pattern of the clouds just made it look funny. When I made it to Stoughton however, the funny shape that I thought I saw turned out to be what I originally thought when I saw it from a distance: a funnel. There was a funnel cloud that must have been directly outside the town. I’d never seen one before so it was super cool. I didn’t expect anything of it where I hadn’t seen anything in the weather, so I wasn’t overly worried, but I did still ask a local about it just in case. He told me it was no big deal and it would probably go back up. Pretty much right after he told me that, it did start to shrink and eventually went away. The other thing that happened in Stoughton, was that I found these raisin cinnamon buns that looked too good for me to say no to and oh my god were they good.

The funnel cloud

I left Stoughton early and reached Weyburn, where I would stop for the day before noontime. I tried something new in that I intentionally didn’t try riding at my max pace for the day and I quite enjoyed doing that. Before making it to Weyburn, I ran into another cyclist. This one was Jill going from Vancouver to Ontario and she told me how so far in the prairies, she had regularly been trying to outrun thunderstorms and tornadoes. I didn’t intend to stop in Weyburn for the day, but once I got stopped at the library and working on my blog for a while (I started drawing my route and if you haven’t seen the My Route page on the blog, it is far more up to date on where I am), I didn’t feel like going further and decided to stop for the day. 

When I left the library, a biker (Sharon) stopped and asked me if I was travelling, as she saw my loaded bike. She asked where I was staying for the night and when I said I didn’t know yet, she ended up inviting me to stay in her backyard. I happily accepted her offer and followed her to her house. After getting my tent setup for the night, Sharon invited me in and offered me supper too which I also happily accepted. Later on Sharon’s husband Rod came back home as well and he was just as friendly as Sharon was. We ended up talking into the night until we decided to head to bed.

At this point I was about halfway through the prairies and fully enjoying them and the incredible generosity of the people living there.

Distance Biked: 705.3km

Total Distance Biked: 5892.7