Tuesday July 14, 2015

What are we doing in Medicine Hat when we were going to go to the Dinosaur Provincial Park?

Well, the conversation went like this last night in the motel room:

J: Do you want to go to the dinosaur park?

R: If you do.

J: It is 175 kms out of our way

R: Yep

J: There is forecast for thunderstorms over the next 4 days in that area.

R: Oh

J: Campsites are only available for 2 nights.

R: We are going to cycle 175 kms out of our way, possibly in the rain and only have one full day looking at rocks.

J: Yep

R: Let’s go to the Hat

We left Taber at 7:15, we had a long ride ahead us. My back wasn’t too bad although it was still a little painful. My sore throat has gone, I now have a full blown cold in my nose. Ralf was still feeling a little low.

We were storm chasing today. We could see the rain clouds ahead of us for most of the morning. Fortunately, we didn’t catch up with the rain and we had a lovely ride in almost perfect temperatures.

We were passing corn, potatoes, fields of cash crops and at one point I could swear I could smell dill – obviously you need a lot of dill to go with those dill pickle chips.

It was mostly flat and a good tail-wind all the way to Medicine Hat.

We stopped in at Subway for lunch and chatted to an Australian fella who is heading towards Toronto.

I thought about stopping at this place to pick up some sausage for dinner.  As we don\’t have freezer bags with us and no way of keeping the sausage cool, we didn\’t stop.  Nice building though.

The Municipal campsite in Medicine Hat was a really nice campsite. $15.00 for the pitch, free showers and $2.00 for laundry, a camp kitchen area with tables and sinks, almost perfect. Wi-fi is slow but we can’t have everything.

There is another touring cyclist here tonight, Brandon. He is heading in the same direction, but is feeling a little worn out. He has done some big miles and of course mountain passes.

I told him we were going to go to Maple Creek a distance of 97 ks tomorrow. He was taking a rest day and then thought he might go to Swift Current (225 ks). When I told him about the campground in Maple Creek, he thought he might reduce his distances so that he could enjoy the ride. – Good plan.