WE MADE IT! I’m typing up this last entry from my livingroom in Bridgewater, in pyjamas, and loving the fact that we can just veg out for the next few days.

Now I’ll fill you in on the final chapter!

In Fredericton, after doing internet stuff in the morning, and getting my bike fixed at a wonderful bike shop, we headed out. Let me just say right now - kudos to all the bike shops across Canada who refuse to take payment (or much payment) and treat tourers like gold. We headed across the river and took pictures of the gorgeous rain clouds that were heading our way (well, at least we enjoyed them while we could?) and would rain on and off on us til halfway to Gagetown. Happily, the rain clouds seemed to be on our side because they encouraged us to seek shelter in the “biggest gift shop of the east” in Burton - where we met Jana, who was kind enough to let us relax under her covered patio at the store. After asking us all about our trip and finding out that we were planning to stay in Gagetown for the night, she ended up inviting us to spend the night with her and her family for the night! It was supposed to be our last night camping, but we were more than happy to have a place to stay!

On our way to their house we were waylaid by a giant patch of very abundant wild blueberries peeking out from the woods on the side of the road and spent about 15 minutes stuffing our faces with them - Mary Anne was almost speechless she was so happy, as blueberries are a staple at her cottage north of Peterborough. We then stumbled across a patch of bunchberries and had to stop again. Another reason bike touring is so wonderful - can’t see these things from the car!

When we got to their place in Gagetown we couldn’t believe our eyes. They live at the top of a big hill overlooking Gagetown and the Saint John River and floodplains. You can see for miles and miles and miles, including the cheery little ferry chugging across the river! Their house was under construction and you could tell it was going to be just gorgeous - curvy lines and nooks and big whole tree trunks sprouting through multiple levels. Jim, Jana’s husband, was doing all the work in the house and we got the “grand tour” from their daughter Sophie. We also met Nicholas, their son, Marilyn, their adopted Nanny, and Max, the very well behaved black lab. We got to eat a delicious supper together, watch the bike races in the Olympics, and got separate beds! Wonderful.

The next day we biked to Saint John - the first part of the morning it was misty and drizzly, but our views of the river were fantastic. It’s up higher than it usually is in the spring due to all the rain! There were some wall-like hills, but also some lovely straight and flat sections along the river. At one point I saw a mother and daughter walking on the road carrying a quart of some sort of fruit, and said hello - they said hello back, and then ended up stopping us to pour a huge handful of ripe, fresh, blackberries into each of our eager outstretched hands!!! Yes!

We stayed in ultimate luxury in Saint John - Brennan’s friend Jason in Saskatoon had given us coupons for the intercontinental hotels group, and we finally used them on the “Holiday Inn Express”. With all the rain, kind people, and family and friends in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, we ended up inside every day in those two provinces! It was nice to wander around downtown Saint John and reminisce, as we had both been there last year on our Otesha bike tour, and have delicious restaurant food.

Got up early the next day to catch the ferry to Digby, NOVA SCOTIA!! Mary Anne went inside to grab our tickets and I noticed another biker guarding his bike and another - just like I was keeping an eye on mine and Mary Anne’s. His tiny back paniers suggested that he probably wasn’t touring, but when I wandered over to ask where he was coming from, he said, “Victoria”. “Me too!” I laughed. Then I asked when he left - “July 16” was his answer. JULY 16!??? He (Stuart was his name) and his friend Kyle had left from Victoria over two months after Mary Anne and I, making their journey across Canada less than a month long. They figured they were averaging about 250 km a day! The day before, they had biked from Grand Falls to Saint John (over 300 km) and were planning to ride into the night that day to make it all the way to Halifax from the ferry. Although we thought they were a little crazy (just to be doing the trip that fast!), we had loads of fun talking with them on the ride across the bay of Fundy and wished them luck! Poor guys... they were hurting a little bit. haha.

The ride after the ferry to Bridgetown was at first quite hilly, but then flattened out after Annapolis Royal. We spent the night with my good friend Josh Campbell’s parents - the first time I’ve met them, but such a friendly couple and made us a great meal and lent us their massage chair for the night.... MMMM!

I was pumped for our ride into Wolfville, but it decided to rain almost the entire way and blessed us with a headwind as well. I was disappointed because I had been really looking forward to showing Mary Anne the gorgeous routes along the valley but ended up having to take the shortest way to get in out of the pouring rain. Again, it started raining halfway through eating our lunch, and as we were trying to stuff the last bits of delicious spicy chicken and bacon sandwiches down (bought in a wonderful local bakery in Middleton), we met two other tourers, Ross and Megan, who were spending a month exploring Atlantic Canada. It’s always a treat meeting other tourers, especially on deserted roads where you least expect it! They told us the weather here had also been atrocious (10 straight days of rain) but were both still smiling and happy.

Steve, my roommate from my last year in Wolfville, welcomed us with a massive feast and a big hug!

Mary Anne and I spent the rest day in Wolfville doing a little tour around the woods paths and town, as I had been telling poor Mary Anne a thousand stories about Wolfville our whole trip. It was fun to keep running into people I knew - that just didn’t happen on our trip usually!!! We ended off our day with a nap, a drive to the look-off, and a BBQ before hitting the hay. It was actually sunny all day and we soaked it up, surprised at how hot it got and how good it felt! For me it was great to be back in Wolfville, and I was surprised at how I felt - more like closure than wanting to be back there - I love it in Wolfville, and it will always feel like home, but I’m thinking I may want to be somewhere else next year, if only just to meet more people my age and explore a new place.

Our last “official” full day’s ride to Halifax was typical. Headwind, and rain near the end of the day - we had to laugh - it just wouldn’t be our tour without rain. Before the bad weather hit, we blasted the music we had been listening to all tour on our tiny stereo we mount on my bike (haha, only the basics on our tour) and climbed, and climbed, and climbed - who knew that Mt. Uniake in NS was actually quite a big hill???? When we decided to stop for lunch it really started to look like rain, and I just couldn’t stand the thought of being interrupted halfway through our meal by rain again - so we ended up eating lunch under the flatbed of a headless transport truck on the side of the road. Yep. It was soooo scenic. Later we stopped at an Esso station pumping out terrible and wonderful 80s dance tunes, and stopped for a 5 minute dance party and to refill our water. It was another one of those giggle-till-you-cry kind of days - our favourite.
Once we hit Sackville, though, the rain really started to come down. It poured. So much that we abandoned the thought of going to Point Pleasant Park that day to officially end the tour (we couldn’t take pictures in the rain!) and just went straight to our friend Kristy’s house, who biked with us last year on our east coast tour. We chatted and ate and got into dry clothes, and tried to get it into our heads that - we had done it!

The next day was our official “end of tour” day - my mom, dad, and grandparents came to meet us at Point Pleasant Park, where we dipped our tires into the Atlantic and took lots of pictures.

We drove to Mahone Bay and then rode, unloaded, back to Bridgewater where Mary Anne and I will relax and play until Wednesday, when Mary Anne goes home. Mary Anne managed to get a massive screw stuck into her tire and got a flat on the way back (only her second of the trip, whereas I’ve had 5), so we arrived home a little late and more than a little ravenous! My aunt and uncle Sarah and Rory and their kids Alexandra and Nelson, who we had visited in Revelstoke BC, were home and had made us all a delicious dinner! And Rory and Nelson presented both Mary Anne and I with a cross-Canada medal that they had made at my Nonna’s house before coming down. We were both so touched and glad to have gotten a “real medal” for our journey!!

Boy, will it be weird to be separated from her when we have spent the last 3 months so dependent on each other!! One of us always has to be with the bikes and our stuff, so that means taking the other one into consideration all the time. We’ve worked hard to communicate really well over the course of our trip so that we can each enjoy it and not go crazy! I have to say - although we’ve of course had our moments of tension, she has been the best cross-Canada biking partner I could have asked for, and I’m so grateful that we didn’t have to deal with fighting with each other on top of fighting our way up mountains, across prairies, and into headwinds!!

So... a few final thoughts... I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet that we’ve made it - it’s hard to grasp just how big Canada really is, even after biking across - we keep saying to each other, “We did it! I don’t feel it yet!” Maybe on our second full day in Bridgewater it’ll start to hit us, as we haven’t spent more than one rest day anywhere in Canada on our trip. I think it’s funny that we ended up doing the trip in a year of record rainfall... and that we used to joke in Saskatchewan about a weather system following us all the way from the Prairies. We didn’t think it was possible. But it is, evidently!! And it’s STILL raining as I write in this blog!!!

People keep asking me if I’d do it again - my answer is - I’m definitely glad I did it, but I’ll have to wait a few months to even think of doing another tour! I’m not a huge traveller at heart - I’m more of the settle down type. But I loved seeing all of those new places and meeting all sorts of wonderful people along the way. It was great finding out just how kind people in Canada really are!!

I hope to upload one last blog post showing a graph of our distances, final distance stats, and some more interesting facts sometime within the next few days!

The last leg: Fredericton to Halifax remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I think I last left off in Quebec city, where Mary Anne’s friend Benoit was taking very good care of us (ie, feeding us delicious food).

He accompanied us to the ferry that would take us to Levis, where thus began the day of chaos to St. Jean-Port-Joli. We realized we had left our “Route Verte” book (bike routes in Quebec) at our room in Laval, and I got another flat tire (my first during actual riding). We started biking at 9:30, but after all of our troubles and the ferry and the headwind and the rain, we ended up in St. Jean-Port-Joli at 8:00, our second-latest finish. We did, happily, pass through some ridiculously cute towns... very pretty with the mist across the river between the lowland and the laurentian mountains in the background, and darker clouds in behind.

From St. Jean Port Joli to Riviere du Loup we had the biggest headwind I think since the prairies, and it was COLD! A lot of putting my head down and realizing that my odometer was reading 11, 12, or 13 km/hr. It rained in the morning (surprise, surprise) but then only lightly misted and then even “cleared up” (well, was foggy and cloudy but stopped raining, blessedly). We met another tourer, Roland, who had also started off from Vancouver. He was from NB and we ended up biking with him for a bit, and then meeting another tourer from Japan who had started in Calgary, Masa. Masa must have had over 80 pounds of gear, including a GUITAR (if you can believe it!!!!) on his back that he had bought in Ottawa – so he could learn how to play on the road!! His plan was to travel into Gaspe, Halifax, New York, then Washington. Wow! We all ate a hearty lunch together and then kept on biking, the boys eventually pulling ahead. The rest of the afternoon was spent battling a wind so strong you couldn’t concentrate on anything else but PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH. The fog obliterated any scenery along the Fleuve-St. Laurent beyond 200 m, so if you asked me if it was pretty, I wouldn’t really know!!

Fortunately, Roland told us that there was a little hostel in Riviere du Loup we could camp at, so we stopped there for the night, and visited with Roland again, three other bike tourers Roland had last seen in Manitoba – Jim, Mike, and Dieter, and Hetti – a very inspiring 63 year old woman travelling across Canada by bike for the second time!! Jim was telling us all sorts of stories about their trip and especially the bugs – “Well, I’m a Buddhist you know, so at first I was taking the mosquitoes out of the tent in a little plastic bag,” (this next part accompanied by puppy dog eyes looking out from long eyelashes and forlorn expression) “but then I thought, there are so MANY of them! And it was really starting to hurt! So I thought... I’m just moving them on to the next life, right???” hahaha, cute.
From Riviere-du-loup to Cabano : Now, I’m not sure if you were watching the news on August 3, but there were actually houses being evacuated and roads caving in because of the flooding, and guess what we were riding in??? That’s right... the rainstorm that created those flooding conditions. Ahhhhh. Rain, another headwind, huge hills (almost all uphill til 20 km before Cabano, thank goodness it was only a 70 km day), and a very sore back that just keeps getting sorer. We were working so hard we thought our brakes were rubbing for about an hour. We finally got to Cabano and booked ourselves into a very French speaking B and B, just disgusted with the weather. At the grocery store, we had a scare when we thought Mary Anne was having some serious bike issues (she couldn’t make the pedals move) until she realized that her glove was lodged into her derailleur. After we regained sanity and wiped off our tears of laughter, we spent a fun night in the B and B where our hosts built two fires to dry our tent and clothes, and we practised our French all night.

From Cabano to Edmunston – threatened rain all day and did sprinkle a tiny bit after lunch, but nothing major – thank goodness. We met up with Roland again on the road. He was motelling it that night (too cold and wet to tent, he said – and the campground we were planning to stay at that night agreed – they were completely flooded) – so we ended up splitting the cost of a room. Oh well, we’ve done lots of camping  I can’t explain how wonderful it is to run into someone you know (if only even for 2 days) on the road – just an altogether great feeling. During the first part of the ride in Quebec, we had headwind but could see blue skies ahead. We didn’t get the blue skies til the next day, but pretty much as soon as we crossed into New Brunswick, the wind changed to a tailwind! “GOD’S COUNTRY!” proclaimed Roland, as he is originally from Moncton.

Edmundston to Perth Andover – AHHHHhhhhhhhh – sigh of relief. Sun, secondary highway, and the Fleuv-St. Jean. Thank you universe. Feels like our first sunny day in a long, long time – since before Quebec city. It was beautiful, and we met Roland again in St. Leanord, and said goodbye to him again in Grand Falls. Could not BELIEVE the amount of water rushing from the dam in Grand Falls – what a sight! Broiling, frothing water! We ate a delicious lunch on our most comfy picnic spot yet – the patio furniture in front of the Atlantic Superstore. We were surprised to make it halfway through lunch before getting kicked off by the manager who told us that a woman was coming to pick it up (she did!). Through all the hills to Perth Andover we laughed a lot and found stories we hadn’t told each other yet (getting more and more difficult, hahaha) – the shoulder was wide enough to ride side by side, so it was easy to chat. Mary Anne told me at dinner I’m like a comic book character because of all the wacko expressions I make. That night we were planning to camp – but – the manager of the campsite offered us his unused, clean trailer – yes please! We are lucky girls sometimes!

Perth Andover to Woodstock – Debatable secondary road – bumpy, and chased by 3 dogs off leash, more on their leashes. First dog experiences thus far, and we know from last year that it probably won’t be the last. You know that you are in the maritimes when you start to see lobster traps everywhere (mostly on top of cars so far) and every fifth house uses their front yard as a garage, trash dump, or metal and scrap yard. Yep, home at last.

Woodstock Rest Day – spent the day with Aunt Joni and uncle Dale, and Joni’s good friend Anna Marie. We always expect our rest days to be... more restful than they are, but always they seem rushed and full of stuff we “need” to do – Laundry, job searching/internet stuff, cleaning our bikes, ... etc. Too bad because it would have been nice to spend more time visiting with Joni, who I don’t get to see very often! We did have the most delicious breakfast made for us when we woke up (heaven!) and an amazing supper –roasted veggies and steak, mmmmm. Dale took us on a tour of his Christmas tree farm, and we got to see the huge multi-person trimming machine that they use. All the tree-trimmers (about 25 rough-looking guys our age) were eating lunch in huge trucks and giving us both big eyes (what, girls? Out here?) Dale razzed us for the rest of the day about how the guys had a tough time starting to work later on that day – they were eager for us to come back and watch them at work!!!

We went down to Joni’s cottage on a lake later on that day, cleaned our bikes (while it rained), and visited with everyone, including David and Hazel (my aunt and uncle) who had come up for the evening. We did get a little time to – breath – read – relax... but I can’t wait until we are back in Bridgewater and don’t have to hop on our bikes the next day and get somewhere. I’ll be glad to just... SIT!

Woodstock to Fredericton – 110 km of almost deserted highway, big shoulder, and smooth road. Mmmm. Rained off and on so much that I gave up on changing into and out of my jacket and just resolved to be wet. Lots more laughing on the road and while eating (“hey, Mary Anne, mind if I pop a few of those cherries?” ...pregnant pause.... “uhmmmm...” We tackled another big, long, steep hill – and I love the feeling of looking at those monsters and thinking, “yep. It’s big. And it’s not gonna be easy. But I can do it, and I will do it. With 55 pounds of gear, water, and food on my bike! Yeah!!”

And so now we are still fighting with these internet cafe computers in Fredericton, where they won’t even let us onto facebook, let alone add photos (sorry!!! Will add some when I’m at home hopefully!). Only 5 more days until we’re in Halifax, and we can say we’ve done it – WAHOO!

Quebec City to Fredericton, NB remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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From Ottawa we headed towards the little town of Alfred, where we stayed in one of the biggest, loudest, RV campsites we had ever seen. People everywhere. And the tent site they gave us was atrocious, but she only charged us 10:50 so we were happy. We ran into - yet another - a thunderstorm and waited it out under the awning of a gas station (again). Now I will take a little tangent to illustrate...

THE EPILOGUE TO THE BLUE WATER BOTTLE STORY (story continued from last week).
As I was yanking on the bit of water bottle top to open it to take a drink, I saw a big truck approaching from behind and, thinking I would rather have both my hands for steering, balanced the water bottle between my teeth as the truck went by. Unfortunately my hold wasn`t as strong as it should have been and as the truck passed, the bottle slipped onto the road. I cursed and Mary Anne yelled, ``what?`` just as I spotted my poor, sad, blue water bottle being whipped violently into the air about 30 m ahead of us. When I found it on the road it was not only permanently dented but actually ripped in half at the thread. Never even found the top. Maybe that was just its way of saying enough`s enough.

hehehe.

The next day we cycled OUT OF ONTARIO (we were in that province for over a month!!!) and on a little secondary road through Hudson on the south side of the Ottawa river and checked out the most beautiful big houses with gorgeous sprawling gardens. We crossed the river on a little ferry with loads of other cyclists and entered into Park DÒka, where ``la Route Verte``, a bike path or route that goes all the way through Quebec, took us through some amazing scenery. Trees overhanging the path, dark black clouds (yes - another rainstorm) in the distance with the sun spotlighting the path and a bog to the left. Pale greens of leafy underbellies and pale reds of bog maples. Little white tiny flowers in the water. The rainstorm caught up with us midway through the park, and just as it really started to pound on us, we saw a little shelter where other bikers were huddling. Mary Anne said, `Should we stop?`` I said, ``Nah... no point``. Then Mary Anne paused, and said, ``Yeah, we`re hardcore.``

That night we actually ended up getting to visit my good friend Guillaume from Acadia, who is working at a field station about an hour north of Montreal. He picked us up and took us past the little town of St. Hippolyte, where we got to meet all the other students at the field station who even cooked us dinner!! It was great fun practising our french and trying to convince some of the other students from France to practice their English with us (``REAL english Canadians``, as Guillaume said.). We biked from St, Jerome, still north of Montreal, to St. Barthelemey, and had a ridiculous tailwind which made the first 95 km easy but the last 20 km we were pooped. No rain at all and wind at our backs - we were quite happy - until it started to rain again. When will it stop!!?? Really. Come ON!

From St. Barthelemy to St. Anne de la Parade, we cloud-dodged the entire day. When we exited the campground we were under a huge, grey, scary sky but we could see blue sky to the right, a downpour happening ahead of us, and puffy yellow and black clouds to the left. Very strange. We played tag with those big rainclouds all day and only got caught in it twice, but it was fun! We`d get into a town and see that it had JUST rained because there were still puddles everywhere. Or the time we found THE SPOT where it had started raining - and I mean, dry, then wet - like a line where the rain started, as defined as you can get basically. I`ve NEVER seen that before. We stopped on the road and waited for another rain cloud to pass to the right so it would miss us, and charted its trip across the St. Lawrence river where we could see it pouring on a little town on the other side - just one raincloud in the midst of other, more innocent ones. About 15 minutes later we spotted the biggest rainbow I`ve ever seen, soaring in a great full semicircle over the river and shimmering to an end right on the tip of a sunny little peninsula. The sun was out on our side and was it ever. Beautiful. We stayed in a ``Gite`` that night (an Inn) because we couldn`t find camping when we were planning the day before, and when we did find one in St. Anne de la Parade, we were so discusted we decided to stay in the Inn anyways. It was great - got to watch a movie and relax in style. Poor Mary Anne needed the comfort of a bed that night - she had lost her odometer slash bike computer over a bridge!!!

The day riding to Quebec City was just great. We had a side-tailwind, our favourite kind because it pushes you AND cools you off, whereas a straight tailwind makes you really hot because you can`t actually feel the wind, you`re going with it too much. I just can`t get over how nice the people in Quebec are - I`ve never had so many people (bikers and pedestrians) wave or smile, or wave or smile back. There are bikers everywhere all over the road. I had several very pleasant chatty encounters with people - many ask, ``Where did you learn your french, you speak so well!`` So here`s a big thank you to my three french immersion teachers in junior high, Mme. Rossignol, M. Herman and M. Aucoin. I can actually understand most of what people say to me and usually can get across what I need to.

This day was also the day that the Route Verte took us to the biggest steepest hill (we`ve done longer hills but none this steep) we`ve ever biked on. Oh. My. God. I didn`t know if it was possible. We were in our easiest gear, standing up (you couldn`t sit because it just would have been impossible) and working as HARD as we could to get up, and I was worried the whole time I would just tip over backwords. Whew!! We got lost a few times on our way to Laval University, where we were staying for the night, but kind bikers and pedestrians helped us find our way (just take out a map and someone will come tell you where you are and where to go - no need to ask for help). You`ll notice this is our one biking day without rain since.... I don`t know, four days before Ottawa???? GAHH

My feelings after arriving to Laval:

Hungry! Crotch sore. Back Sore. Bottoms of Feet, Sore. Legs, ok. Heart, Sore. Hungry. Arms ok. Eyes ok. Tounge - sore (probably too much chewing. I ate dinner the night before and reached a new low - hungry again 15 minutes after finishing my supper). Hungry, hungry, HUNGRY!!!!!!

And now, I am in the beautiful little apartment of Benoit, Mary Anne`s friend Guillaume`s friend, who is amazing - he picked us up by bike from Laval and guided us to his apartment, and then took us on a walking tour (after it stopped raining - SIGH...) of old Quebec city. Both Mary Anne and I were surprised to feel our legs shaking after our 3 hour stroll - evidently the walking muscles aren`t getting enough exercise this summer. Orrr maybe it could be because we`ve biked 5 days in a row and ... over 300 in the last 3 days. ...? hahaha... not sure. We ate delicious pastry and gelato, went to a little market, and saw the sights of Quebec city. And now, Benoit is in the kitchen making us a delicious chicken pesto pasta dinner, complete with chocolate angel food cake and fruit and whipped cream, and then we are going to go out and see this fantastic light and music show that is shown every night for the 400th anniversary of Quebec city! We love being spoiled.

We are both pretty exhausted. Can`t BELIEVE we are two weeks from being on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Halifax!!!

Ottawa to Quebec City remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We visited some pretty small communities leaving Sault Ste Marie, including Bruce Mines (which had a very nice white gazebo and one picnic table that we claimed for our lunch break) and Thessalon, which was right up against the shores of Lake Huron - a "one of everything you need and that's it" kind of town (my favourite kind). The first community we went through was actually an Ojibway community, and on the railway bridge there was an announcement painted in large white print: "THIS IS INDIAN TERRITORY". We had a tailwind all day and we must have felt rested because we were laughing at everything again.

For example: Mary Anne and I decide that we need to pee. Scanning... scanning... oop, there's a nice deep ditch with lots of tall grasses. Perfect. Mary Anne heads in and when she's ready to come out, she listens for traffic. Traffic from the highway on the left? Nope - check. On the right? Nope, check. Standing annnnd pulling up pants. OHHHH MYYY there is a POSTAL VAN RIGHT THERE from the OTHER road we didn't see in FRONT of her. Woops!!! Oh well, can't win'em all.

The best was trying to get the food into the tree. Always entertaining for Mary Anne (because lately I've been the one throwing the ropes up into the tree), and moreso for the other campers I discovered. I was trying to get the ropes into the tree and it got all tangled up in the branches - almost hopelessly tangled. As I was working it out (involving a lot of re-throwing my water bottle attached to the rope end and vigorously swinging and swatting the other rope end to encourage things to loosen up) an older man asked me, "WHAT are you doing?"

"I'm doing what you do when you don't have a trunk" I replied.
"Do you want help?" he asked.
"No," I said, "I do this almost every night!"
"Oh! Then you must entertain multiple campgrounds, not just this one!" he chuckled.

Even better was when Mary Anne got back and decided to take matters into her own hands and attach the stew and food bags up into the tree herself. She had pulled the bags about halfway up the tree when I cracked a joke and poor Mary Anne dissolved into giggles, and the food started slowly slipping back down the rope towards the ground. It eventually got up the tree, safe from bears and chipmunks and dogs.

Later on that evening we took the time to wander around the shore of Lake Huron - taking pictures, reflecting, watching the Canada geese, and enjoying our rare moments of free time on a biking day!!

The next day riding from Thessalon to Spragge was our 2-month on the road together anniversary. Mary Anne spied a small restaurant on our way out of Thessalon, and since we thought we were going to have a short biking day, she suggested coffee and a hot chocolate, which actually turned into bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, and toast... woops, hellooo second breakfast. Oh well, happy anniversary! Later on that day we actually smelled a field of strawberries and couldn't resist cycling in to check it out. A u-pick - perfect! When the woman selling the strawberries found out what we were up to, and that Mary Anne was from Peterborough (her hometown too) she insisted that we take the berries for free. Yes, please! We ate them later on in Blind River with ice cream. Oh, bike touring.

We found out that there was no campsite in Blind River (oops!) and our short day turned into a medium-sized one - but we weren't too upset because our day had felt so relaxed, it was worth it.

It was actually funny because at the strawberry field a man warned us about two guys hitchiking who had been "attacked by bears and then saved by a man in a transport truck". When we were biking towards the KOA campground in Spragge, I stopped to pee on the side of the road and a man drove up in his truck - great timing Erica - to tell us that there were two bears right on our side of the road at the end of this guardrail!! I got out the bearspray just in case and we did what we usually do - talk loud and bike on the other side of the highway. Another car had stopped in front of the bears to make sure that we made it ok. Strangers are so nice!

The next day was from Spragge to Chutes Provincial Park, another short day. We had decided to do the trip from Sault Ste Marie (an awkward distance of 310 km) in four days instead of three to give ourselves a little break, so we had a bit of extra time. We went through a bunch of construction and as we passed the guy smoothing the pavement, I yelled out, "HEY! ADD A SHOULDER WHILE YOU'RE AT IT!" He gave a great guffaw of laughter and it made me smile too. The roads are VERY narrow, and the shoulders - when present - are rough.

We went swimming when we got to Chutes Park - now this is a place I can highly recommend. Big thick white waterfall, GORGEOUS, with a great big shallow pool at the bottom where everyone swims - sandy bottom, a little bit of gentle rapids, big sandbar with a few trees for shade - it was like stumbling upon paradise and it's only about 1 km from the highway. Amazing! In Chutes we met two older couples also biking across Canada - one couple on a tandem bike!! The two guys came to our campsite and we chatted with them for a bit while making dinner - were they ever nice. We ended up running into them again and again until North Bay, which was really awesome. They shared strawberries and stories with us. It is such a special feeling to be in a city where you know you know NO ONE, and then all of the sudden a bike rolls up and a familiar smiling face appears. We even saw them in their day off clothes - hard to recognize them at first - and had to laugh at our newfound appreciation of each other!

The next morning it started raining again right after breakfast - happened in Thessalon and would happen again in Mattawa - very frustrating. It seems like it rains every other day or more, and everyone we meet says, "Oh we've never had such a wet cold summer". Sigh.

We met a girl that afternoon biking for the children's wish foundation - she was a machine! Although she was riding unloaded on a road bike, she actually covered 260 km in ONE DAY in Lake Superior - and that's hilly. Verrrry hilly. I was pretty impressed.

I called my uncle David to confirm our meeting in Sturgeon Falls - he and my aunt Hazel were coming up to treat us to dinner and a HOTEL(!) the next day. They were originally going to motorcycle up but David said that they had changed their minds - "It's alternately going to be sweltering hot and thundershowering" he said. I laughed and said, "sounds like our entire trip!" The campground we stayed at just outside of Sudbury was... weird. That's the only way you can describe a collection of RVs that big. Sitting right beside the busy highway, dirty, crowded. Why would you stay in a place like that if you have a PORTABLE CAMPING SYSTEM???? I'll never understand RVs.

We woke up that night to the sound of thunder BOOOOOMING around us and flashes of white hot lightning illuminating the tent, and then "PSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" of rain streaming down the sides of the tent. Thank god our little tent is waterproof, waterproof, waterproof. I looked at my watch, terrified it was almost morning and breathed a silent thanks when I realized it was only 2 AM. It was still raining in the morning and continued until the early afternoon, but not pouring.

We were SOOO happy to have a night in a hotel thanks to David and Hazel. They brought us delicious fruit and took us out, and we shared breakfast too the next morning.

The next day we visited a beautiful little lakeside park in downtown North Bay for lunch and continued on to Mattawa, where Josh Mohan (a mutual friend from our bike tour last year) was coming up to meet us for our rest day. We had a gorgeous tailwind and the road was fun - gentle hills and beautiful scenery.

This was the day I realized my blue water bottle was feeling a little down. I'll tell you about it.

THE SAD TALES OF THE BLUE WATER BOTTLE.

Every night I use my blue water bottle as a weight to throw the food-hanging rope into the tree, and it is often left hanging there, for hours, until we hang the food. Choked and miserable, coated in sap and dirt (the mementos of several inevitable failed throws), it stares at me moodily, begging to be put back on my bike. However, it being the harder bottle to drink from, it always takes second place on my bike because I use the white one first. The final straw, I'm sure, for poor ol' blue water bottle was when I was taking a drink at the top of the hill on the ride towards Mattawa. Now, usually I take a drink on the way UP the hill because I'm more in control of my bike. But it was REALLY hot so I took a drink at the top. Bad idea. Top of hill turning into downhill at disturbing rate. Water bottle in right hand. Grade increasing. Speed: also increasing. Checking rearview mirror. OH! Observe two large transports heading my way. Checking pavement. Shoulder! Rapidly deteriorating! Shoulder now forming distinct v-shaped rut with large crack in center! Speed, still rapidly increasing! Left hand reaching for brakes! Brain interupting! Front brakes alone = bad idea when cruising downhill. Shite. Eyes: moving to right hand still holding blue water bottle! Ah! Ahhh! AHHHHH!!! THROWING ILL FATED BLUE WATER BOTTLE MADLY INTO DITCH!! BRAKING WITH BOTH HANDS! Speed decreasing... decreasing... stopping.

Looking back at Mary Anne holding my water bottle, I saw one very confused expression.

Anyways.

We met Josh in Mattawa and thus passed a very pleasant day off - swimming, reading, cooking, and WATCHING A MOVIE (a big deal for us - go see WALL-E if you can, a great movie!) It was really nice to be with another mutual friend from Otesha and Josh was excited to get out of the city and do a little camping. Other than the gang of rowdy, loud, cussing teenagers that kept us up late late and woke up at 5:30 to giggle and talk, we had a good time.

The bike from Mattawa to Mackey was... interesting. We had been told by one woman that there was "one big hill" out of Mattawa and then "fairly flat until Ottawa", and that it was "hilly until Deep River" by a biker in North Bay. On about the 5th big, steady, steep climb, I turned to Mary Anne and said, "you know, if this is that woman's idea of flat, I'd looOOOVe to see her idea of hilly". Mind you, she did say it was "all downhill to Mattawa" which is a red light as far as I'm concerned. Bikers. Again. Never trust ANYONE who says, "It's all downhill to _____ (insert any place name here longer than 5 km away from present location). Mary Anne was quiet for a bit and then suddenly remarked, "You know, I've come to a realization. When people say something is going to be scenic, what they really mean is, this part is going to be hard biking.". yeah. agreed.

In spite of (because of?) the rain that morning, it was a stunning ride. Here's my attempt at an artistic description: The clouds were low - resting with their vague tiptoes on far sides of wetlands, creeping over a dip in the road, hovering flat and long over the opposite shore of the Ottawa river. The white water littles were ALL in bloom, and they coat the surface of many bogs. We saw one bog blanketed with white water lilies, with a midnight blue path around several large dead trees and leading to a massive beaver house; in the background a lazy white fog cloud rested on dark evergreens. I breathed a sigh - OaaahHHHHHHH - half awe, half a moan of regret that it was raining and I couldn't risk a picture.

The next day - the day of the nice and AGGRESSIVELY NICE people:

- Alex, from Quebec who is cycling around his province with so much gear! Really nice guy, and we had a good chat with him on the road.
- Guy in bistro in Deep River giving us advice on routes whether we wanted it or not.
- Guy asking Mary Anne in campsite whether we were lost - "I'm a local! I can help!"
- Woman in bathroom who offered us chili and wanted to take our picture and add us to facebook?
- Newfoundlander. The worst of the aggressively nice people, a dirty old man with a little black dog who came over to our picnic table on the pretense of introducing his dog to us. Upon finding out I was from Nova Scotia, he announced that he HAD to give me a hug - and when I refused, ("No thank you, I'm eating" - code for, "You're nasty and I don't feel AT ALL comfortable touching you") he actually came up and hugged me from behind. Then he had the audacity to warn us about creepy people in campgrounds in Quebec. I wanted to scream, "YOU'RE THE CREEPIEST PERSON WE'VE MET so GO AWAY!!!"

Anywhoo. We did have a good day, we stopped in the very nice town of Deep River to make Carnivorous Chili (the first time we've cooked with meat) and swam in the Ottawa River in our campsite in Pembroke, the warmest water we've experienced so far. We did some mutant synchronized swimming and generally had a pretty fun time.

We discovered some lovely secondary roads on the way to Fitzroy Provincial Park the next day. It was the day of colour and texture - sagey green soft fields with little yellow sprigs throughout, soft tufts of rich burnt yellow fronds of grain with braided core, curly deep fresh green herbs, muted grey barns with creeping ivy, and all the while the Ottawa River on our left. Mmmmmm! I loved Beachburg, another "one of everything and that's it" kind of town. We passed through some very obviously Scottish-founded communities "McNab and Braeside" and had a fun time listing every Scottish last name that we could think of and sounding them all out with a Scottish burr. Our favourite was the next town's name, Arnprior. Arrrrrnprior. Arrrrrrrnprrrrrrior. Arrrrrrrrprrrrrriorrrrrrrrrrrrr. At one point I stopped being able to breathe I was laughing so hard, realized with some part of my rational brain I couldn't possibly bike any more without oxygen, started laughing harder, and had to throw myself off of my bike so I could breathe again and take some giant gasps of air to feed the laughter that was pouring out of me in screams and tears!

The next day although we woke up to rain, we were sheltered by a large tree. Unfortunately it didn't stop raining and just got worse... and worse... and worse... until it was a giant thunderstorm and we were biking in a warm, pounding waterfall that was the heaviest rain I think I've ever biked in so far (having escaped under a canopy in Penticton in similar - colder - circumstances). "You know what!" Mary Anne shot at me over the dull roar of the water. "What!" I yelled back. "WE'RE HARDCORE!!!!!!" She volleyed back. Ohhhhh, yeahhhhh. It was dripping off of my eyelashes, sluicing into my contacts and rendering it near impossible to see - I was wiping my eyes so often and only really seeing through a crack in my right eye which was somehow missing most of the drops. Water screaming down my back and arms, little streams from all points of my body onto the wet road. Oop, and now that's water raging down my back down into my bum. Shiver. We found a gas station and huddled under the awning for about half an hour until I realized my tire was flat (thanks, life) and got rid of another tire which had worn out, changed the tube, started biking in more rain (the lightning having stopped by now), tire flat again, sighiiiiing.

When we finally did get to Ottawa, I was so impressed by the bike paths! Mary Anne's brother picked us up on his bike and I biked to Emily and Julien's, good friends from Acadia. I'm here now, using Em's computer, and basking in how good it feels to be with people I really love in a real home under a real roof, with a real towel and a fridge and comforter and different PJs (thank you Emily) and different food and good conversation. AHhhhhhhh.

Here's to making it out of this giant province in one piece, and to only 3 WEEKS left on the road!!!! WAHOOOOOO!

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So, here's a quick summary of where we went:

June 29 - from Fort Frances to the Seine River (96.9 km)
June 30 - to Hillcrest Cabins, about 40 km after Atikokan (98.75)
July 1 - to Shabaqua (107.4)
July 2 - to Thunder Bay (74.1)
July 3 - errands in Thunder Bay (24)
July 4 - to Nipigon (105.6)
July 5 - to Rossport (79.16)
July 6 - to Ney's Provincial Park (90)
July 7 - to White Lake Provinvial Park (87)
July 8 - to just short of Obatanga Provinvial Park (53), where we got picked up to go to crazy boy's fishing camp
July 9 - at crazy boy's fishing camp (details to follow)
July 10 - from Wawa to Rabbit Blanket camp in Lake Superior National park (30.86)
July 11 - to Pancake Bay Provincial Park (124), in insane headwind!
July 12 - to Sault Ste. Marie (80).

There are too many stories to tell from this long period of time, so I'll pick some of the best and leave the rest for later, maybe when I can actually talk to some of you lovely people that read this blog!!

The day's ride to the Seine River was gorgeous - at lunch time we ate next to a big meadow with a stream running through it and saw a mother deer lead her fawn to drink at the stream! The mother would walk a few steps, then the little fawn would BOUND BOUND BOUND right up to meet her - the grass was too tall for him to walk properly. Sooo cute. The day was beautiful but we knew we would have to camp somewhere totally random because there is nothing really right between Fort Frances and our Inn we planned to stay at past Atikokan. So we saw this massive Bridge over the Seine River and thought it would be perfect - no one would see us and we'd be close to water (well, scary fast water but water nonetheless). It was a STEEP climb down to the area underneath the bridge though - so we actually decided to lower all of our gear down on ropes. I know, we are crazy. Sliding our bikes along this very steep embankment and hiding them in the trees at the top, and then going through several attempts to lower our paniers down ("ERICA LOOK OUT!!!! uhmm... guess we'll make the knot stronger next time..."). As we worked to move our stuff we realized this was the buggiest place either of us had ever been. Ever. Instead of cooking dinner, which would have meant certain death by mosquito and black fly, we ended up eating our stolen bagels from the continental breakfast and our emergency canned beans, underneath the tiny tarp, in all of our rain gear, in about 30 degree weather - we pretty much were melting into the ground but it was better than being eaten alive. And I mean eaten. We had blood all over our bodies from the bites and our ears were swollen to about twice their normal size all around the cartilage, and blood caked into our hair. For the next two days our ears burned and were numb at the same time, and we felt like we'd been in a great terrible fight or something. It was so horrible that we couldn't even stand the idea of camping again and ended up spending the next two nights in a cabin, then in a shady little motel. It was worth our sanity. Anyways it makes a good story now, and makes me think twice about wanting a job outside!!

The next day in Atikokan we heard about the two bikers just inside Manitoba who were killed by a car from behind - mom told me on a payphone and after I hung up and told Mary Anne about it I cried to think about those people who were so much like us - full of hope and determination and just biking. What a terrible tragedy. We are always careful but these roads often have very little shoulder and the best you can do is just get off if there are two transports coming in opposite directions, we do have little rearview mirrors which are a great help - and we picked up safety reflective straps in thunder bay to increase our visibility.

On Canada day we biked to the town of Shabaqua, which consists of about 4 houses and a motel, and met 5 other bike tourers biking varying long distances. On our trip that day I saw a moose jogging away into a bog - she was the exact color of the black spruce in the bog - and a bunch of turkey vultures circling around our heads - I said to Mary Anne, "I didn't think we looked THAT bad!!"

I just can't get over first what a treat it is to simply talk to other people, and second how great it is to talk to other bike tourers. Comparing gear and cooking styles and routes is so much fun, and hearing horror stories, legends ("this one guy past thunder bay was chased by a pack of wolves for half an hour on his bike and just managed to get away!!") and stories about the kindness of strangers. Two of the people we met were our age and it was just SO GOOD to share stories with them.

The ride into Thunder bay was gorgeously downhill. We've gotten to the point now where we are too lazy to really go off the road too much to find a place to pee, and I remember squatting in the ditch at one point that day and thinking, "yes hello there Mr. Trucker... I'm jus' lookin' at you watchin' me pee... Yep... allllrighty then... seeya." What are they going to do, stop and ask you to please find a toilet?

We were supposed to stay with a friend of mine who is living in Thunder Bay now, but I couldn't get a hold of him and we ended up staying with Brad and Melissa, friends of Mary Anne's boyfriend. They were just so great - made us dinner twice and Brad even drove us to get groceries at the end of our long day biking around to do errands - it was fantastic. I fought all day with the cell phone gods. My cell phone had broken down before Fort Frances and evidently Telus doesn't sell any phones - NOTHING telus compatible - within about 700 km East of Thunder bay so I couldn't get one. Mom had to sell her soul to the devil (ie, darken the doors of Wal-mart in bridgewater) and COURIER a phone to me, which didn't get to any of the places in time that they said it would, and the phone ended up chasing me across (well, chasing is a strong word for what hapenned) northern ontario until I finally got it in Wawa, a loooong way from Thunder Bay. On a Sunday as we were biking I saw a Purolator truck go by and cursed at it for being on the road on sunday and not giving me my phone!!!

After our rest day in Thunder bay, we pushed on to Nipigon. On the trip we met Rameesh, who is HAND biking across Canada and visiting all capital cities on the way - 7300 km - for polio research. He was a friend of a friend of Mary Anne's, and we were both glad to meet another inspiring individual who is really dedicated to making a difference. Rameesh was doing presentations as he went and was accompanied by two vehicles, one behind and one ahead - we felt very safe cycling with him!

The next day's ride to Rossport was killer. Back in mountain country, and a headwind that stayed with us most days until Sault Ste. Marie, with varying strength. We climbed and climbed and CLIMBED. We saw a bear right next to the road - I said, "Mary Anne. I am going to stop biking now because there is a bear in the ditch. Hmm". I got out the bearspray just in case, but we ended out just biking on the other side of the highway and TALKING VERY LOUDLY until it saw us, got up slowly, looked at us a bit, then turned around and trundled back into the woods. WHAT a gorgeous creature - shiny and black and curious, looked like something you'd want to cuddle but... maybe not. In any case, it was less of a threat than the pack of red ants that attacked me later on that day as we tried to find a suitable spot to eat. I felt a tingling on my ankle and didn't think anything of it until it started to HURT and realized... the tingling was actually the feeling of an entire hill of ants swarming around my ankle. I think I'd rather the bear.

That night we stayed with - let me get this straight - the sister in law of Mary Anne's boss 4 years ago - probably our most random connection so far, but she fed us a delicious prime rib dinner and we got to sleep in a bed again. As we were eating I realized that normally when you eat, you eat until you're full. But when you are bike touring, you just eat until you're tired of chewing. Sigh.

On the way to Ney's Provincial Park the next day we went through more huge hills, and I have never been happier about the existence of dynamite, which shaved off the steepest bits of the hills near the top.

The distances we were biking kept getting shorter in this stretch but each day was harder, as our legs got more and more tired from fighting the hills and headwinds. The day to White Lake provincial park was one of the top 4 hardest days so far for me I think - we woke up at 6 to the sound of a headwind just ripping through our camp, and you know it's going to be bad when the wind wakes you up in the morning. That day we pedaled down all but the steepest downhills, thanks to the wind making it impossible to coast.

The next day we met Matt, Mary Anne's boyfriend, who picked us up halfway through our biking day to whisk us off into the wilds of Northern Ontario. By lucky chance he happened to be near us, but on the other hand, he also happened to be on an all-boys fishing weekend in the middle of nowhere. So we ended up on this tiny island 2 hours off the highway, with about 11 drunken, coarse, and altogether inappropriate men (boys?) for a day and a half. I can't even repeat to you some of the comments that came out of the most rowdy of the bunch, the tamest being, "Wow Matt, look at those BBQ stripes on that zucchini... that is TIGHT!" -(Pointed look at me)-"TIGHT like your ASS!" yeah. yeah. Most of the time we were quietly reading in our little cabin that we shared with some of the boys who were off fishing or partying or trying to burn down the island, and they sort of moved around the island like a half-crazed tornado of hormones and beer and interesting moose-wolf hybrid sounds emanating from their huddle. They would thunder into the cabin, make some noise, do a few crazy things, and then head out again. What a day.

Matt dropped us off in Wawa where I FINALLY got my cell phone, and we did a short trip to our next campsite where we paid 30 dollars for a patch of gravel and a lukewarm shower - I was not impressed. It had kind of been a stressful, tiring week - I forgot to mention that I found out I had completely worn out a tire. During the process of changing my front tire for my back one (b/c the back one gets more weight) and then getting Matt to pick me up a replacement tire, I got two flats. Ugh.

We had 200 km to go to get to Sault Ste. Marie, but there was absolutely nowhere to stay near the 100-km mark, so we ended up pushing 124 km to get to Pancake Bay; not an easy feat considering the amount of hills and the insane headwind that cropped up about mid-afternoon to blow us around the road. But it was worth it. The first time we rounded a bend in Lake Superior Provincial Park and saw the huge downhill, with the massive lake and blue rolling hills in the distance, my breath just caught in my throat... unbelievable scenery. When we were about 15 km from the Park I saw a car pull over ahead of us with a NOVA SCOTIA plate - only the second one I've seen since the beginning of the trip - I started screaming and then my good friends Scott and Josie stepped out - and I just screamed even more, "NO WAY! NOOOOO WAYYY!!" and then started crying, I was so happy to see their familiar faces. They were driving across Canada to live in Nelson for at least a year and decided to camp that night with us in the Park, and it was just amazing to see friends. It had been since Winnipeg that I'd seen anyone I knew, and before that since... Calgary? dear lord.

Our ride to the Soo was pretty hard for me. I think Mary Anne was doing better than me that day, and I just felt like my legs were lead - understandable, but usually it's my crotch and back that bug me - feels like I've been given a good beating in the groin most nights after the bike ride. Yeah I know it sounds bad but it's true! We met another tourer who was doing the trip from Vancouver to Toronto - alone! Pretty amazing. It was, again, really fantastic scenery but I mostly had my head down against the wind and just concentrating on moving my legs, one after the other, pedal stroke by pedal stroke. When we got to the Soo it was like a dream. We stopped at Velorution, the best bike store in the world. They had free camping for bikers and offered us beer and donuts. They fixed our bikes' minor injuries and then refused to take payment. We were staying that night with my prof from Acadia's parents, Reg and Norma, and they came and picked us up to take us to their home - basically paradise - on Lake Superior. We swam in the lake, showered, and then they took us out for a delicious dinner and gave us a narrated (by Norma) tour of the town.

So today we're resting our bones and looking for jobs next year, reading and calling people we love.

It's amazing to realize we are two thirds done, and by the time we get to Ottawa, we'll be just over two weeks away from the end of our trip. It seems like forever since we started off in Vancouver, and it seems normal to wake up every morning knowing we'll get on our bikes and cart our gear bit by bit across the land (sometimes that's what it seems like, just a trip carting our gear around. I am so jealous of all you people at home with your beautiful unloaded bikes and your permanent beds and your roofs and your drawers to put things in and place to put your toothbrush every night and your fridge and oven and computer and ... oh my, where did THAT come from???).

Anyways, I guess the main thing is, I'm still glad to be out here, doing this crazy thing, with Mary Anne, on our wheely machines.

Hope to update again sooner!

Here's to the trip to North Bay - the non-hilly bit. Waaahoooo!

Northern Ontario remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Wonderful, warm ride from our B &B in Neepawa to Portage - sunny, and flying with a tailwind. We were halfway to Portage la Prairie when a car drove past, slowed down... waved... pulled over... it was Susan from the B&B, with an ice cream bar for each of us!!! We were so happy, what an amazing surprise on a deserted little stretch of highway. The three of us happily ate our ice cream bars and she wished us luck and then continued on her way to Winnipeg. I just can't get over people in the Prairies - they just seem to exude help and kindness.

We landed in Portage where we stayed with Sheri and Kent, two roommates sharing an organic farm. They fed us a wonderful dinner of lentil burgers and gave us a comfy futon to sleep on. Thank goodness for small comforts!
June 20 -

Woke up to a delicious breakfast of oatmeal and Saskatoon berries - made by Sheri and Kent - we love it when we don't have to make our own breakfast!! Unfortunately, by the time we were ready to leave town (around 9), I looked at Mary Anne with sad eyes and said, "I'm HUNgry again." "Me tooo" said Mary Anne. We can't keep up with our stomachs!!

We expected the ride to Winnipeg to be a lot shorter than it was (100 km) so we were a bit exhausted when we got to the city. However, it was a gorgeous, VERY flat ride through an all green blanket of grass and low shrubby trees. I've been complaining to Mary Anne that I just CAN'T seem to ride with no hands (hmm, 15 pounds of weight on the front of my bike miggght have something to do with that), and as I was complaining about it yet again, I was like... "I'm DOING IT, I'M DOING IT!!!" That was the day all surfaces touching my bike seat were absolutely killing me, so it was great to be able to sit upright in a totally new position.

Thankfully, our mutual friend Kathryn (aka Zeke, aka Hotpants) from the Otesha bike tour last year came to meet us on a secondary highway and weaved us in and out of residential streets, parks, and bike paths until we arrived at her apartment in Wolsley, so we didn't have to spend much time on busy city street. Hotpants suggested we go to a potluck slash birthday party of a friend of hers; we said we'd go as long as we didn't have to make intelligent conversation! It was SO DELICIOUS - rice wraps with delicious veggies and sauces, and then COCONUT GELATO and blackberries. Seriously. Next time you are in the grocery store, please, please stop and buy yourself some of this stuff, and eat copious amounts for me (potentially off someone else, it seems like it would be a shame not to).

June 21 -

Rest day in Winnipeg. Hotpants and Mary Anne and I got delicious warm cinnamon buns and walked around in the sunny, gorgeous morning, and then went out on our bikes to eat lunch and do errands in the city. It turned from a beautiful sunny day into rain and HAIL!! We hid out in a second hand bookstore, then headed back home. Mary Anne got to be the flag bearer in Hotpants' anarchist marching band that night - they were celebrating the solstice - and I stayed at home, too exhausted to do anything else!!

June 22 -

Hotpants biked with us for part of this journey - we hoped to make it to seven sisters falls but ended up staying in Beausejour as Mary Anne had been up late in the marching band the night before and I was still tired. Along the way we stopped at an old limestone quarry turned swimming hole and ate lunch and hopped in. The feeling of being in that cool water after 50 km of biking through HOT SUN is just unbelievable. We did an "aquatic freedom" dance of joy for the temperature in the water - consisting largely of arm flapping and bobbing up and down crazily. On the way through town I finally mailed home my winter sleeping bag at a gas station/post office, and when the guy running the gas station found out about our trip, he started offering us all this free food and drinks!! Interesting. Since then we've had a guy in a gas station leave us 20 bucks when he left - "to buy supplies" and people have become more and more incredulous of the trip - my favourite response so far after saying where we are going being "HOLY SHIT!"

Other memorable moments from this day -

- making stew and being upset that it wouldn't cool down because it's so hot outside, spreading it all over the tops of our tupperwares and then eating it "hands free"... yeah, like a dog. Try it sometime... makes for some hilarious unstoppable laughter!!
- trying to savour the chocolate Hotpants gave us like wine. Sniffing it... tasting it... then Mary Anne thought that there should be something different than swirling it (obviously, can't swirl chocolate) so she started rubbing it all over her teeth. ahahahaha... yeah
- Cleaning our bikes AGAIN. the neverending saga.

June 23

FINALLY out of the Prairies! This was our second longest biking day - 118 km! We saw 7 deer and it was Beeeeautiful. When I first saw the few flattish boulders covered in lichens, I actually cried I was so happy to see familiar terrain. I had no idea I even missed those rocks until I saw them again. I can't express how much I miss the east coast. I didn't know that I even noticed a sense of history and ocean-side culture, let alone appreciated it. Some of the the towns in the prairies are so new and ... seem almost barren and personality-less compared to the life and old-feel in maritime places. Anyways, we were seeing forests again - trees, swamps, streams, bogs, yum yum yum. We saw two beavers, and one of them SLAPPED it's tail on the water to warn the rest as we biked by.

We must have had 8 people today stop and ask us where we were going and where we were coming from and OH when did we start? When do we plan to finish? These same questions, every time. I love telling people about our trip, but it's funny - always the same questions. And it can be hard when you're trying to write your grocery list or trying to shovel pasta salad or 6 cookies (actually that was today) into your mouth and take the time to answer their questions with enthusiasm and warmth.

Oh. And this was the day of the gang of horseflies - we had - no exxageration - about 25 horseflies circling and circling around us - I called them the motorcycle gang and Mary Anne called them our fan club.

The park at West Hawk lake had a nice cold lake (the deepest in Manitoba!) and the most clean, big, modern bathrooms we've seen in a park so far. Sweet!

June 24

The day of other travellers!

It's getting late here so I'll have to be quicker!

We had only met two other bike tourers since BC, but this day we actually saw 6 and met 4 other bikers and one walker!!

We saw a hiker on the side of the highway and when we went to go ask him if he needed any water or anything, and asked him where he was going, he said he was WALKING ACROSS CANADA!! His organization promotes inner peace (I'll find his website and post it on here later) and he was doing this as a fundraiser. He started on April 1 from Vancouver (yeah.. we asked him all the same questions people ask us) and we were just catching up to him in KENORA. He does 40 - 50 km a day. Walking. Walking! WALKING! I just couldn't shake how amazing that is... how different it would be... really made me appreciate coasting down those big hills even more. His name was Joseph and he was full of smiles and curiosity. He told us we were the nicest bike tourers that he'd met so far

We also met 3 men touring together - 2 french, 1 belgian. We met up with them to bike the next day, they were really nice and very jealous of our "small" amounts of stuff - because we share some things, we have less, while they had just randomly met up to bike together so they all had everything they needed.

Then we met Dennis, the crazy Dennis from Korea who was biking from St. Catherines to Vancouver. He had third degree burns from sunburn all over his legs but a HUGE smile and a very positive attitude - laughing because he hadn't done his research about the prevailing wind in Canada (he's going the wrong way - east to west) and doing 140-150 km a day. Once (he said) he couldn't find a place to eat or sleep so he just kept biking. At night. In a lightning storm. 230 km later he stopped. Haha, what a guy.

It was a gorgeous ride to Kenora, swaths of white daisies and orange devil's paintbrush coat the roadsides. It's funny - before our ride two Manitobans warned us about the craaazzzy hills on the way to Kenora, and we had to laugh at their idea of steep hills - they were quite pleasant and a welcome change from flat flat flat!!!

June 25

Day of Frustration. We had to go back to the bike shop we had briefly visited the day before to fix a broken screw on Mary Anne's bike, and then on the way to Sioux Narrows, Mary Anne broke a spoke. We were actually biking with the group of 3 men from France and Belgium and Roland wrapped the spoke for us and suggested Mary Anne disconnect her brakes until she could get another spoke. It's too bad that we had those troubles, but man oh man, this day must of been one of the most beautiful so far. It is just unbelievably, ridiculously, intimately, beautiful. Everything is lush and green, lakes around every corner, bogs, marshes, streams, huge rocks with great rose and white tinted stripes through them, something different over every hill. So different from the mountains in BC - majestic but cold and seemingly so far away.

When we were biking with Roland (french guy) we had a deer run with us for about 20 seconds, then run across the road and up a big hill on the other side - very cool. Our campsite was overrun with poison ivy, but we got through it to skinny dip in the famous lake of the woods. Excellent.

June 26

Hitchhiked to Kenora (why are we always being saved by men with pickup trucks?) and laughed our way into the bike store in Kenora for the third time (we're now on first name basis with Adam, the wonderful man who always had time to fix our troubles) to fix Mary Anne's tire. No problems getting back to the park - just put a sign on my head that said "SIOUX NARROWS Please" on it as we walked out of town and got picked up within 5 minutes!!! VERY buggy in the park. Still homesick. Sigh.

June 27

We woke up to the sound of rain hitting the tent - ouch. That's only happenned once before and it was on a day off so we just went back to sleep, but we didn't have that luxury this time. It stopped long enough to get to Caliper Lake Provincial Park and make dinner and walk down to the lake... and then, it slowly, slowly approached us from the other side of the lake. We could see it. Making the islands and peninsulas grey, one by one. Drumming up the pollen into clouds so yellow we could see them from across the lake. We ate by that lake until the last possible second and then RAN back to our tarped tent site (Dad, I'll show you the picture of the tarp set-up when I get home, you'll be proud). I have never felt so chased by rain as I have on this trip.

Funny - I had put some stuff on my bike and then walked to the tent and heard a bike falling - I yelled over my shoulder, "was that my bike???" And Mary Anne replied, "No, that was a little boy falling off HIS bike. That sound you thought was your paniers hitting the ground? Was actually the sound of a soft little body hitting the earth." Man, that girl cracks me up.

I wrote a list of things I will and won't miss about this trip:
will: Being outside all the time.
won't: being outside all the time.
will: getting a lot of daily exercise.
won't: having to bike EVERY DAY.
will: all the wildlife
won't: all the bugs!!!
will: being able to tell people we are biking across Canada!!
won't: People asking us the same three questions every day.
will: FOOD and Mary Anne spicing things and eating whatever I want
won't: buying groceries every day.
will: having nothing better to do than read and write and thing
won't: not having my computer!! (aka, my umbilical cord)
will: Mary Anne
won't: missing everybody else!
will: hot breakfasts
won't: Farting CONSTANTLY. WOW.

June 28

Today. Again, woke to rain. Sigh. Packed up. Stilll raining. Ate. Stillll raining. Left. Stilllll raining. Biking biking biking biking RAIN IN MY EYES DRYING OUT MY CONTACTS raining raining raining bike bike bike PEEEEE on the side of the road, yes folks we're biking in the rain nope we're peeing near this driveway actually. Bike bike bike it's stilll raining. That was my head today, we biked 55 km with almost no breaks before lunch - amazing how the weather can motivate you. We ended up just throwing the idea of camping again to the wind - half of what we owned was wet, the tent was still wet from the morning, and we wanted a nice. bed.

Which is where I'm headed now!

Goodnight!

Eastern Manitoba to Fort Frances remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Starting June 11, 2008: to Colonsay, Saskatchewan: 57.88 km @ 12.4 km/hr average!! (more on that later); weather-related rest day in the Minnie Winnie RV, then to Wynyard: 133.61 km @ 21.7 km/hr, to Foam Lake: 55.43 km @ 19.9 km/hr; to Yorkton: 102.81 km @ 22.1 km/hr; to Russell, Manitoba!: 110.80 km @ 18.7 km/hr, to Shoal Lake: 79 km @ 17.2 km/hr… today: (June 18, 2008): impending doom cloud, 2.7 km and one friendly Manitoban with a truck later: Neepawa, Manitoba – 90 km by blessed, blessed escape-storm machine.

Here are some highlights! For pictures go to:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039855&l=8d20d&id=132701813

We left Saskatoon with the knowledge that it would be rainy and windy. Well, this is what we have come to expect in Saskatchewan, despite the locals insisting that this place is “nearly a desert” (lies! All lies!) and that “we can write this week of rain down as a significant historical event in our journals!” yay? But we didn’t really get how windy it would be. This was the day we made it halfway to our original destination and ended up near the tiny town of Colonsay, 57 km away from Saskatoon. We were pedaling our GUTS out, no matter whether we were going down a hill, up a hill, or flat. I have never before used my granny gear (yes, that one that I am used to using in the Rocky mountains or when EXTREMELY tired up the hill to Steve’s house in Wolfville) on FLAT terrain. This is something that I would really rather not experience again, thank you very much.

Well, we finally made it (slooooowly and paaaainfully) to the “painted rock campground” near Colonsay, set up our tent, and decided to wait out the rain. However. Saskatchewan locals have never been ones to watch bikers in distress, and soon enough the wonderful couple who ran the place asked us if we would like to stay in their unused miniature Winnebago RV. YES!!! It was just so lovely. They invited us to stay an extra day (to avoid biking in a similar wind and worse rain the next day) and even treated us to a delicious breakfast and dinner, where we ate possibly three times the amount they did – THANK you Hugh and Marg!

Finally our next day to Wynyard, the wind decided to change – the first of Saskatchewan’s many attempts to keep us in the province, we decided. Hilarious weather during the glorious tailwind – rain, sun. Hot, cold. Drizzle. Sun again. But all the time, wind at our backs. You know, living in Saskatchewan, you might really start to believe in some higher power. You look ahead towards the horizon and you can see that it’s raining on That house, but not this house… and this house, but not that house over there. Hmm.

When we did get to Wynyard, we were about to turn into the road to the campground… and it was mud city. Sooo we cycled into town, hoping to camp behind a motel or something, and found this little B&B – when they found out about our trip, they wouldn’t let us camp – gave us a whole room to ourselves, use of the bathroom, kitchen, and livingroom… all for 10 bucks each. Have I mentioned how much I love Saskatchewan people????

The next day we decided to make a short trip, just to Foam Lake – so that we would be ending up in large centers again (if we kept doing trips of ~ 90 km, we’d keep ending up in the boonies). Somehow, we ended up getting stuck on main street in Wynyard just before we headed to the Foam Lake campground the day of the town parade. We’re in this pharmacy getting stuff and when we walk out, the whole town has come together, lining the road, and there is a marching band coming towards us! We have to bike down this road to get out of town! We grabbed our bikes and ran, pretty much across the front of the parade, to the other side of the road… and then thought, what the heck. This is what bike touring is all about. Let’s just watch the parade. I’ve seen small town parades before (In Bridgewater) but Wynyard is a REALLY small town. Basically everybody’s kid or grandpa or cousin was there, driving their tractors, nice cars, decorated golf carts, decorated pedal bikes!?? You name it. Mary Anne got a ride in a massive seeder tractor IN the parade!!

The next day we biked to Yorkton, Saskatchewan and celebrated our first-month on the road anniversary by going out to a restaurant and eating the buffet (a good choice for bikers with endless appetites). Unfortunately as we were stuffing our faces with mashed potatoes, salad, rolls, ribs, and chicken, there was a squirrel stuffing his or her face with… my waterproof food panier back at the campground. Bastard! I was so sad and angry when I got back, it actually chewed through two flaps of waterproof material to… chew through more plastic to get at my utensils? (idiot!) and got a few bites of bagel before I got back and yelled at it, tried to throw a stick at it, hit Mary Anne in the head with said stick, and then it yelled at me for a while (the squirrel, not Mary Anne). I managed to sorrrt of repair it with duct tape and seam sealant, but… yeah. SIGH! Oh! The great thing about the Yorkton day was:

Biking biking biking biking

Passing wetland.

See large white ducks.

Wait! Those aren’t ducks! Those are PELICANS! “MARY ANNE! STOPPING!! PELICANS iiinnnn the PRAIRIES!!” Wow! We stopped and they all flew away majestically, then came back and fed for a while with those great big orange beaks. Why!??? WHY!!! I don’t know, but I love it. I mean, pelicans? Reallly??

Mary Anne and I also realized that we are at this stage in our relationship at this point: “Where’s your?” “I put it in the” “Oh. Ok. Thanks.”

The next day we crossed from the land of wind and rain (aka, Saskatchewan, the province that rained on us every day besides for our one rest day in Saskatoon – yeah) into Manitoba. We actually raced a storm cloud full of lightning into Langenburg where we waited out the storm at an ice cream store (it ended up just missing the town anyways). Mary Anne and I are still laughing all the time, even though we are dealing with the inevitable stress of being together every day, all day!

It’s funny. Sometimes I think I can’t miss dad out here because I’m turning into him – Dad, your klutz genes are being turned on this year in your daughter. I CONSTANTLY trip, bump into things, and skin my knuckles on random pieces of sharpness. Mom tells me my inability to name things in times of excitement or mild stress comes from her. Thanks Ma (“Look Mary Anne! A…. a what? Hawk? Coyote? Fox? Bounding deer? I couldn’t tell you, I’m too pumped about it!)

Our first night in Manitoba we camped at a second rate little town campground, where the single bathroom had two toilets (with no stall divider!?) and no toilet paper. We met a bunch of guys traveling by van from New Brunswick to Edmonton, and I got really excited and jumped up to ask them if I could see their NB license plate. “Sure,” they answered, puzzled – “why?”

“Weeelll,” I said, “I’ve been trying to figure out the little license plate blurbs for all the provinces we’re passing through and we’ve got:

Beautiful BC; Alberta: Wild Rose Country; Saskatchewan, land of living skies (HA! Don’t we know it); Friendly Manitoba; Ontario: yours to discover; Quebec: Je me souviens, NB???, NS: Canada’s Ocean playground.

So what IS on the NB plate!??” I finally got out.

“Nothin’. We’re just PEOPLE.” He said. Hahaha…. Pooor New Brunswick, no blurb!! How about, “New Brunswick: Power and Trees” or, “New Brunswick: the Irvings live here!”?

On the day from Russell to Shoal lake, we saw SO MANY little Prairie dog creatures – ones that are dark with stripes and spots on their backs and chirp and scurry into the grass when you bike by, and a whole big group of basking normal-colored prairie dogs on the side of the highway, stretched out with their big fat tummies just melting onto the hot gravel. Spa day on highway 45 evidently.

So this morning we were preparing to leave Shoal Lake in the beautiful sun shine, and were a little bummed out when the sky turned a little grey, but by the time we reached the highway, we were pretty freaked out. We could see a VERY angry black cloud unlike anything I have EVER seen before approaching us. It was thick and smeary, like icing, but you could see black rain coming from it and white spots coming down as well, which often mean hail. Lightning was jetting around merrily on all sides, and we were hoping like mad that it would just sort of… pass by behind us like it did at the ice cream store in Langenburg. We had stopped to take a picture or two of it and this guy pulled over in his truck and said, “Umm… don’t mean to be presumptuous, girls, but… I just drove through that, and I almost had to stop my car several times the rain is so hard. There’s hail in some parts of this storm as big as pennies and loonies, and a tornado warning. Would you like a drive somewhere?”
Again, yes, we would like your help, friendly Manitoba. Len from Flin Flon, Manitoba, drove us to the next town on our agenda – Neepawa, Manitoba, where we experienced the storm from the relative comfort of several stores in town and then a beautiful, wonderful B&B – the “Garden Path”. Tomorrow it’s off to Portage, and then Winnipeg!!

Saskatoon to Neepawa, Manitoba remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The pictures for this part of the tour can be found by pasting this link into your browser:

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Where did I leave off... Calgary! Dave took me to a restaurant where we ate delicious fancy food (what a luxury on a bike tour!) including even OCTOPUS which was actually quite good! Who would have thought. So, many good conversations and meals and a walk along the river in Calgary later, Mary Anne and I got a good breakfast at Dave's cafe that he runs in Calgary, and then got a drive past the city craziness to Strathmore to bike to Drumheller - our first day of "real" prairie!! Mary Anne commented that the number of pickup trucks has quadrupled since we left BC, and I have to agree. Here's a snippet of conversation:

Erica: "You know the great thing about Alberta?"
Mary Anne: "No, what?"
Erica: "If you get stuck on the side of the road with your bike, one of these pick-up trucks will pick you up."
Mary Anne: "And if they don't, the next pick up truck will. And if they don't, the next pickup truck will . And if they don't pick you up, their GRANDMOTHER is coming by in her pickup in 10 minutes!!" (Note: every Prairie-local I have told this to laughs their head off when I tell them this and then says, it's true.)

You know you're not used to Prairie sights when:
Erica: " That's an interesting castle-like structure way over there in the distance!"
Mary Anne: "You mean, the silos with the house in the background?"
Erica: "Oh. Yeahhhh."

We slept two nights in Drumheller and gave ourselves the time to check out the Royal Tyrell museum, which has a huge dinosaur exhibit, it's amazing. I usually have about a 2 hour limit in any museum, but this was pretty neat - I've never actually seen (that I can remember) huge dinosaur fossils before.

On June 4 we headed from Drumheller to Hanna. The hills were still gently rolling at this point, but the landscape was definitely approaching what I had expected of the prairies. Mary Anne summed up the Rockies, by bicycle:

"up.... uup.... uuuuuup.... uuuuuuuuuppp.... uuuuuuuppppppppp.............. DOWWWW - AHHHHHHWWWW -- AHHHHHHHHHHH - AHHHHHHHHwwwwwNNNN!!"

and here's my version of the Prairies on bicyle:

" green field... green field... brown field.... green field... beige field... TREES!TREES!FARM!HOUSE!TREES!... green field... brown field...."

It's so funny, it's just flat fields, and then every time you see a little pocket of trees, there is a house nestled inside. Yeah, they gave the houses shelter from the wind, but evidently there aren't enough bikers on the prairies to have trees to break the wind for the bikers. Happily, you can usually see for several kilometers behind and in front of you, and cars on the OTHER side of the road will often cross the rumble strip to allow cars passing by you to give you more room. Yay Alberta drivers.

This was the day we experienced being able to see the weather in advance - fun when you are biking towards sun, not so much when we saw that we were biking into a nice, juicy, thunderstorm. We grabbed our groceries as quickly as we could in Hanna (and spied another couple with touring gear on their bikes going into a motel!) and then sped to the campground; as soon as we got there it started to POUR and the lady actually let us camp in the kitchen shelter. Thank you awesome lady at the fox lake campground. Which should have actually been called, "land of the migrating and angry waterfowl and other miscellaneous bird species". We have never heard such sad, angry calls coming from a bird before. We actually saw a group of swans swimming down in the lake near our campsite. Cool. This was probably one of the coldest nights we've spent camping, and I ended up wearing my spandex tights around my neck as a scarf!

June 5 - Hanna to Oyen - my longest time EVER on a bike. We started biking at 10:00 AM and got to our campsite at 8:00 PM - 117 km and 7.5 hours actually on the bike later. The headwind/sidewind was unbelievable. It actually ripped the saliva out of our mouths as we biked, and we began to look forward to transport trucks so that we could surf forward in their wind wake. The constant sound of wind in our ears began to grate on us at about hour 3, and just got worse - the wind in the Prairies often picks up mid morning, and doesn't calm down until 9:00 pm. As we got closer and closer and more and more tired, we lost the ability to avoid the rumble strip between us and the main road - sigh. At one point there were very few cars on the road, and I started "tacking" like a ship to the other side of the road and then quickly biking straight back to the other side and then tacking back across. Maybe I'll write a book about it sometime. . We were so hungry and so tired, that we started searching for green signs like they were water in the desert. Any green sign. Just tell us how far we've gone, or that we've made it somewhere important! You can see the signs up to 5 km in advance, and they make you bike faster just to get to them.

When we finally got to Oyen, we met the couple we had seen in Hanna the day before - they were biking 7500 km across Canada for prostate cancer. It was really neat to meet other people who were doing a long trip and check out their gear and share stories. We did see them again in Rosetown, and wished them good luck on their trip!

Hanna to Kindersley was finally a tailwind day - gorgeous, sunny, flat. As we left Hanna, we could see on the horizon that there was a little line of rain ahead - raining to the left of the road, raining to the right - but not ON the road. So awesome! Unfortunately our luck didn't stay with us for long, and as we coasted into Kindersley (and I mean, coasted - as in, 3 revolutions on your pedals was getting us about 400 m at 25 km/hr - that's very little work for a lot of distance!) we could see that the town was getting a dump of rain from this black cloud. We were approaching this black cloud pretty quickly so we stopped, put on all of our rain gear, and then got back on - and WOW! I've never experienced this before - as soon as the rain hit us, the wind changed just like that! And we were back into headwind country. It rained all night so we shacked up in a cheap motel that slept and fed us breakfast for only 32 dollars each!

It was still raining the next morning, but Mary Anne and I told stories and made up stories all the way until lunch, when it had sort of stopped raining, but the wind was picking up. We pulled our bikes up a little gravel road and ate in the shelter of a little natural gas shack in the middle of a field. While we ate the rain started up again, and when we tried to wheel our bikes back onto the highway, disaster struck! The soil in Saskatchewan is very clay-y - and it sticks to bike tires like nobody's business. It was stuck between the fenders and the tires, and after about 4 meters, I had fist-sized balls of clay on either side of my brake pads and the wheels wouldn't move. By this time we were cold, wet, and angry!! I started to get a little freaked out - the clay was almost water insoluble it was so sticky, and I was going to have to take my bike apart to make it move again.

At this point, a family in a van stopped beside our bikes and asked us if we needed help. "YES!" we said, "but we can't bike anywhere! Our bikes are too muddy!" "No problem" the guy in the front said, "I'll just go and get my half-ton, we've got a farm just a km up the field there". See!! Pickups in the Prairies, I tell you. It's wonderful. So we ended up using the pressure washer on their hose, having lunch with them, playing with their awesome curious kids, and getting a tour of the tiny town of D'arcy. It was great, Maggie (the woman in the car) told us that at one point she had been rescued as a cyclist, and had always wanted to return the favour - but "You cyclists! you're so self sufficient! No one has ever wanted help!"

Well, we appreciated the help, big time!! We also were really glad to have the chance to talk to someone who knew about what was being grown in the fields and could tell us about some of the plants - Doug (the man in the car) was telling us that in one of their fields they are growing legumes, and canary seed over the legumes!!

Funny moments that day included deciding we were going to write a documentary about how to stealth pee in the prairies (ditches, bridges, other side of train tracks, small bushes, and our oh-so-favourite just wait for the traffic to die down and hope for the best), and Mary Anne eating a muffin: I asked her if she wanted one, and she replied, "No." Then a few minutes later, "Well, maybe I do want it. I don't know. If I don't know, I should just eat it right?" Then the next moment I looked up, and she had this - this - deer in headlights, wide eyed glassy stare and the entire muffin cup was covering the bottom half of her face. Priceless.

From Rosetown to Delisle was the biggest headwind we've ever faced, it was absolutely brutal. Max speed that day (not counting when we turned around to go the farm we were staying at) was 22.8 km/hr, and our AVERAGE was 13.5. It took us about 6.5 hours to ride 86 km. That was definitely one of our top three hardest days - only thing that pulled us onwards was music, and knowing we had a farm with people to bike towards and a room over our heads. Little did we know, the hosts we were staying with Christine and Fugi would be so amazing. They fed us a delicious dinner, let us shower and wash our clothes, and then opened their glass doors to show us a steaming hot tub, handed us each a beer, and left us to it. WOW.

The greatest thing about the Praires has been the unexpected, and abundant, wildlife! Pronghorn antelope, scads of migrating birds, hawks, frogs, foxes, a coyote, deer, even porcupines!! (Well, roadkill porcupines). It's amazing, I never thought we would see so much on flat fields!

So now we are in Saskatoon, having spent a half day to get here, and then a blissful day off - grocery shopping, internetting, walking around, cleaning our bikes, etc. Mary Anne went off to explore town and I met a good friend of Brennan's from Saskatoon, Jason, who took me for a walk around the river and gave me a really interesting perspective on travelling and some of the decisions I'm trying to make right now about what I'm going to do in the next couple of years.

But right now it's late, and we're supposed to have a wicked headwind tomorrow! Time for bed!

Calgary to Saskatoon remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The ride to Roger's pass was made much more pleasant by a light rain (preferable when climbing a mountain in comparison to hot sun on your back). We kept expecting the climb to get worse, and although it did take some pushing to make it to the summit, Mary Anne and I both agree that climbing the Rockies just don't compare to the coastal mountains of BC after Hope on the number 3 highway. I just can't describe how beautiful the mountains here are - blue blue sky, grey black mountains, pure white snow, dark green trees - yikes. Hard to keep focused on keeping your tires pointed forward when these gorgeous peaks are begging to be stared at. On the way up the mountain we dodged and saw many things on the road, in this order: a group of black, slimy slugs; a group of earthworms; about 10 snails; tire bits from transport trucks, and pee bottles from truckers (gross! these things are everywhere. Can't they just stop driving??!!)

We also learned some valuable lessons on the way up to Roger's Pass.
1) seeing a wolverine disguised as a bear cub is an excellent motivator to increase speed.
2) Laughing and biking up hills are two completely mutually exclusive activities. Unfortunately, the sensation of a wiggly bike after you start laughing just gets funnier. I've had several close calls this week laughing so hard I can't breathe on my way up a steep climb, JUST getting my feet out of the clips before I teeter over sideways onto the shoulder.
3)We are very poor judges of sane amounts of couscous it takes for 2 meals. BUY LESS COUSCOUS.
4)It is often possible to pee on the side of the road, sans bushes, without anyone actually stopping, or looking.
5)There is an un-ending variety of poo present in Glacier National Park.

Number 5 leads into where we spent the night - 13 km past Roger's Pass (and the snow!). Sarah had recommended staying at the trailhead of Beaver Valley hiking trail. We saw at least 6 varietes of poo at or near our intended campsite, including fresh bear scat, moose poo, and a very large canine variety. We were a bit nervous (more so when we were cooking dinner away from where we had set up the tent, and the last hikers of the day casually mentioned to us that they had seen a "beautiful wolf checking out your tent!" ) but we decided to stick it out and sleep close to the bearspray. We emerged the next morning unharmed (not counting a few bites from the biggest, peskiest mosquitoes I have EVER SEEN in my life) and headed to Golden.

Now, some people will tell you that the road from Roger's pass to Golden is all downhill. This is not true bikers! We fought our way up some wicked hills, but the views that day were unBELIEVABLE. I was so glad I was on a bike and able to pull over and savour some of the more breathtaking mountains and valleys from the highway. When the road finally started to slope downhill, we felt like we were in a movie - it was unreal.

Our stay in Golden was made very pleasant when we hapenned upon a heated pool near our campsite - swimming feels absolutely delicious after a long sweaty biking day!

On our way out of Golden there was this MASSIVE climb to get out of the Valley, which led to this little narrow road snaking through and up and down the mountainsides. Mary Anne and I listened to music to get us up the big bad hills, and got a lot of good laughs out of this trip: pretending to be the road workers ("Gee Jim, looks like we need a brige over this gorge here." "Well that's right Sam, but there's nothing to attach it to on the other side!" "No worries, we'll just BLAST a hole in this giant mountain!"). We climbed a hill called "10 mile hill" and were rewarded with amazing views of the rockies on either side.

I'm so lucky to be biking with Mary Anne, who laughs at all my jokes and tells me jokes that make my stomach ache by the end of the day.

We stayed in Yoho National Park that night, where we spied on ground squirrel and crow politics, and gazed up at towering, rocky mountains with the yellow evening sun missing the campground, but pouring its last rays all over those high peaks. We met two guys, Chris and Luke, visiting Canada from Switzerland. We had a beer with them and a great chat - so good to talk to other people our age!

The next day we headed into Alberta, and climbed Kicking Horse Pass (otherwise known as the continental divide, 1650 m elevation). We got to the sign for Alberta and realized we had done the pass - there are no signs! Too bad. The worst of our hills over with, we happily coasted towards Lake Louise and Banff. Mary Anne stopped to take a self shot of her and the mountains, and I suddenly noticed a mama bear and cub (black bears) on the side of the road munching on some grass. We finally got to take pictures of bears to prove we have seen them (they make the count up to 7 bears so far on the tour!!)

In Banff we stayed in a hostel (Luxury!) and explored the town a bit before heading to Canmore. We actually saw elk grazing on lawns on the town outskirts! Crazy. I ate a HUGE breakfast in Banff consisting of 2 slices of toast, 2 slices of thick French toast, 2 slices of bacon, 2 sausages, 3 scrambled eggs, and a pile of hash browns. Our waiter said he was "surprised and impressed" that I finished.... that's how we do it on a bike tour!!

Our bike to Canmore was short, downhill, and with a tailwind. We ended up cleaning our bikes for 3 HOURS that night (there is no end to cleaning a bike, only a sigh and a "that's it! I can't TAKE it anymore!!") and enjoyed the comforts of my cousins the Newton's home (unfortunately they were all gone, but were very generous with offering us their home for the night!). The next day we tailwinded it to Cochrane, a town on the outskirts of Calgary. My friend Dave from my frisbee team at Acadia came to pick us up to drive us through the city limits and into the city so we could avoid getting nailed by careless drivers on the busy city streets. Mary Anne and I have split up for the first time in two weeks (gasp!) and she is staying with two friends from high school and university while I am getting Dave to show me the sights of Calgary. I finally got to throw a frisbee around again in the park, we went for a nice walk along the Bow River that we've been following from Banff, and I've eaten plenty of good Calgary food!! It's a great rest before we hit up Drumheller, dinosaurs, and flat FLAT prairie coming up. I can't wait!

Here is the sad ending of this entry:

I have been composing a song for my father (that's you dad!) ever since I lost something in Penticton, and here goes:

Oh I lost my knife sheath in Penticton
While eating our lunch in the rain
I realized my loss in Summerland
Oh the grief, the woe and the pain!

Oh that knife sheath was a thing of beauty
My father made it for me
Eagle, crescent moons, and leather
It fit my knife perfectly

So I made a new knife sheath in Summerland
Cardboard and duct tape, it's sad
Oh I lost my knife sheath in Penticton
Oh make me a new one, oh dad!!!

So dad, that is the sad story of how we ate our lunch under an awning of a men's tailor store in Penticton - usually my knife just goes right back into the sheath, but this time it was reallllly peanut buttery and jammy and my knife sheath got left on the ledge and the knife into my tupperware - the sheath was most likely picked up by someone homeless that sleeps there, says the manager of the store who I called in a panic the next morning. At least I still have my knife!!! Sigh.

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Our from Summerland to Vernon (Coldstream, really) was our longest yet during the tour - 102.7 km. That's Mary Anne's longest day ever! It was hot, so the first time I've ever been mildly glad of a headwind, which dried the sweat off of us before we could complain about the heat. What a beautiful ride it was - halfway along the shores of the Okanagan lake, up and down through little towns like Peachland and Oyama, (As we were exiting Oyama up a hill I said to Mary Anne, "Oyama biking machine!!!" -- I know, terrible.) and views of the like and the dry hills as far as you could see. Make sure to check out the pictures! Unfortunately, the whole ride was on a busy highway, and the sound of cars rushing by me all day puts me on edge - they are so loud, my heart starts pumping and I start to feel like I'm in flight mode - I bike faster, my heart beats faster, and I am just exhausted when the day is done. Hopefully I'll get used to it. Mostly, the cars and trucks have been really good about giving us the room we need, with a few notable exceptions (to the trucker in Kelowna: I don't FIT in a space 2 feet wide between you and a raised sidewalk with those paniers!!)

Since Chris and Sarah Brown (friends of the family who now live in Vernon) were going to feed us a delicious dinner, Mary Anne and I didn't need to grocery shop and decided to treat ourselves to the lunch buffet at Pizza Hut in Kelowna. I'm sure that if we weren't wearing our biking gear, people would have wondered how these two fairly slim girls manage to KEEP slim, as we both ate about 5 slices of pizza, not including dessert pizza, and two or three helpings of salad. Mmmm-mmm.

Staying with Chris and Sarah in Coldstream that night was a real treat - beds and dinner, and even a (gasp!) drive to the post office and grocery store. I really appreciate being in a car after that much biking.

The next day, we biked from Coldstream to 13 km past Sicamous - another long day, 97 km. Mid-day we stopped for lunch a hundred meters off the highway on a small farming road where we could at least get a little rest from the sound of rushing cars (although the highway was much less busy than the day before) and enjoy the view of snowy mountains. We had forgotten our daily application of "Chamois butter" (to avoid chafing and saddle sores on your poor, overused bum) and ended up just standing on this road, bike shorts around our thighs, smearing gooey white stuff all over our bums and laughing ourselves silly as the traffic passed by on HWY-97... we narrowly missed being seen by several cars coming down our little road sporting men in cowboy hats. You know you are close to Alberta when you start seeing people actually wearing cowboy hats?? And you're not near a bar?

We tried 2 campsites before finding a place to spend the night - first one no showers, second one too expensive - and found the perfect little campsite, complete with wooded trails, mountain-stream fed river, and best of all, close proximity to the bathroom and showers! We spent a very peaceful evening reading and reflecting by the river, with those snow-capped mountains off in the distance, whispering to us about hills to climb in the days to come...

The next morning we got up for our ride to Revelstoke and made ourselves the most massive pot of oatmeal so far. We keep overestimating the amount of cereal we need, but this was just outrageous. Please check out the pictures on facebook of our "too much oatmealllll" faces.

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We were both really glad to have done an extra bit of distance the day before, because although the ride was fairly flat for most of the ways into Revelstoke, the last few hills into town just killed me. Thank goodness for Mary Anne's willingness to let me draft behind her the last 10 km into Revelstoke.

Revelstoke is a beautiful, beautiful town with snow-capped, glacier-tipped mountains surrounding it and neat little shops and nice bike paths all over the place. We are staying with my aunt and uncle Sarah and Rory. Sooo good to see Chester, the dog we took care of for a year while my aunt and uncle were on a bike trip in Europe for a year, and great to get to play with my two little cousins Alexandra and Nelson. Pretty funny, yesterday after we had unpacked (and what I actually mean is - exploded all of our stuff on the floor) we went outside to find about 6 or 7 small, naked children running around the yard, playing on a trampoline and in a dirtpile waiting to be part of a garden. It was like fairyland!

So, tomorrow, weather permitting, Mary Anne and I will climb Roger's Pass, which promises a climb of about 1300 m in 70 km. It's the highest mountain summit on our trip, and we should see some breathtaking scenery!!

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Getting out of Vancouver was pretty interesting, we had a good map but it was hard not to get lost. We did manage to find some sweet bike paths through the city, some even winding their way through rivers and forest, and ate our first official lunch in the shade beside a beautiful little creek. A few times on the way through the park Mary Anne dropped her bike and couldn't pick it back up again... the first of many times I laughed til I cried. It seems that the combination of biking constantly and being with Mary Anne produces a lot of hilarity.

We went to Mission the first day and stayed at a quiet little campground, where the woman warned us offhandedly that the bears were coming down the mountain, but don't worry, they wouldn't bother us. We thought she was just kind of showing off, and we decided to camp near the outskirts of the campground where it was prettier. I joked when we were setting up our tent that the little path beside the tent was where the bear trundled up and down to check out the campsite... but then a bear DID trundle down, when we were eating our dinner. We just froze until it walked away and then looked at each other, not really knowing how to react - eventually we decided to just hang our food, clean everything up as much as possible, and sleep in our tent which was a mere 5 feet away from where the bear had been... but it was all good, we weren't bothered at all.

Here's where the bear was. Oh yeah.

The next day we left to go to Agassiz, where we stayed with some organic farmers who had 30 horses, a huge house, indoor arena and viewing room where we stayed, complete with our own bathroom and kitchen!! They made us a big dinner that we ate together with their parents, who also live with them, in a separate part of the house, and a few other relatives that were visiting. Later on the husband of the house, Claus, took us to the hot spring pools in Harrison. We were so happy to stay in such a beautiful place, and Miel and Claus were so young - it was really inspiring to see how they had set up such a successful farm in such a short time.

On the way to the horse farm

Miellie Meadows, the horse farm.

The next day we rode 35 km into Hope, where we were warned that we should probably start the climb into Manning Park in the morning, not after lunch, but we decided to go for it anyways for some reason.

You start climbing as SOON as you get out of Hope, and I mean CLIMBING. The grade was pretty steep, so we were only going 6 km/hr (I walk at 5), and it was 33 degrees in the shade. I surprised Mary Anne with a tiny portable stereo that a friend donated before I left, and it saved us up that mountain. At one point, we stopped at a mountain stream to dunk our heads and shirts in the water to cool off.

It's too bad you can't tell from these pictures how steep it was, but we went for four hours at that pace - many stops! ... including this one here, at the no stopping sign... we did technically stop BEFORE the avalanche zone... heh heh... ahhh.

Eventually we realized we weren't going to make it the last 20 km into the park, (42 m to about 1200 m elevation was good enough for that day), and we were originally planning to camp on the road, but then we saw a group of cars up ahead and went to go see what was going on and if we could get a ride (it was 7:30 by this point and getting cold). When we got there we realized that everyone was gathered to look at - you got it - two bears on the side of the road. We used the, "we're tired and we're biking and there are BEARS" line with great success and a really nice couple loaded our bikes into their pick up truck and drove us into the park, where the lady at the front desk gave us the conference room to sleep in, and insisted that we used their showers, pool, and hot tub. Yes, please!

This is me at the park being too tired to get up and get my water:

The next day we climbed the Sunday summit - to about 1200 m again (you go down into a valley in the park and then shoot back up again). It was a hard climb, but not as hard as the day before. We biked beside the Similkameen river, which was broiling and muddy with spring runoff. It was the highest most people had ever seen it, and we even saw two growing trees being RIPPED from the bank into the river as we watched!!

(here's my, NO MORE HILLS! face)

We came into Princeton on the biggest downhill I have ever had the pleasure to ride down. 5 km of just, DOWN. I was screaming my head off down that hill the whole way, I'm sure the cars heard my happy yodels!! When we got to the sign for Princeton we did the "we're still going down!" pose.

.

Next day we biked from Princeton into the "desert" of BC, into Keremeos, where I did a 10-day course when I was 16. Keremeos is full of scrubby mountains, rockslides, and a LOT of sprinklers.

We stayed at the Eagle Campground, which looked like it was about to be swallowed up by falling rocks above!!

There was a bit of a climb out of Keremeos, but the scenery was AMAZING. Cows and horses everywhere, mountains crowding the road, and neat little plants dotting the landscape.

We met with another beautiful hill on the way to Penticton with Kelly, from Otesha, who took us to his home in Summerland. We love these signs. I realized later I had gone 69 km/hr down this hill! Woops... sorry Mom :S

So we are very happy to be resting today - our legs are definitely feeling the last 6 days of biking - and our backs, bums, and hips too!

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So Mary Anne and I got together for lunch and a ride to Stanley Park on Sunday. We ate at Andrew's restaurant and then headed down towards Kits beach and circled around the peninsula to get to Stanley Park. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and when we took off our sweaters we discovered that we actually have a very similar outfit... we kinda like looking the same though!

Vancouver is a funny city, spread out all over the place and every house has every detail attended to - I keep seeing men running around in trucks doing the landscaping for an entire street - cutting the grass to the exact same length on each lawn - I wouldn't be surprised if they were coaxing the trees into greater synchrony in their blossoming time!!!

(this guy was RAKING UP the cherry blossoms!! Come Onnnn!!!)

Where are the ramshackle sheds, the garbage spread out on the front yard, the scrubby lawns with cheesy fake animals on them? I never thought I'd miss them here, but I do. It's too well-manicured for my rural Nova Scotia sensibilities! But, it is gorgeous. I mean, look at these pictures.

Even the buildings are pretty when there is a blue sky behind them. And the mountains are always there, snowy and scary.

Scary because we'll be in mountains in a few weeks. Ahhhhhh.

Anyways, I really enjoyed Stanley park - it was more of a pedestrian slash rollerblading dodging trip than a ride (Sunday + warm weather = crowded park) but it was so good to reconnect with Mary Anne and remember how much fun we have together. We laughed the whole way around the park.

Yesterday I headed up to UBC to check out the campus - at one point I was seriously considering going there - and it was as nice as I expected - I didn't really do too much exploring on campus because I found the botanical gardens and ended out spending about 2 hours in there wandering around. Their gardens are so amazing, huge tall trees and a massive asian garden with flowering plants up the wazoo, a north american garden, food garden, gardens from the 7 continents, a wooded trail... man oh man. Little benches and nooks everywhere to sit down and enjoy a book and some trail mix.

Here is where a large tree couldn't decide if it wanted to eat me head or tail first:

Yesterday night I went to dinner at the NAAM with Andrew and my friend Lauren from Acadia. The NAAM is a restaurant that uses local organic food and sells their delicious meals for ridiculously low prices. YUM.

So right now it's raining, and making me lazy, but tomorrow is Mary Anne and I's prep day, and we set off for our first official day on Thursday! Wahoooie!

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We then collected our bikes to head down to the beach where there were kite-surfers surfing on the ocean - one older guy kept doing jumps for us (we were appreciatively hooting and clapping whenever he made a particularly exciting move). We visited "mile 0", the official start of the transcanada, and also dipped my tires into the Pacific ocean! Ice cream and a scenic drive along some of the richer parts of the city made for a wonderful ending to the day.

The next morning I went back along the lochside drive to Sidney where I caught the ferry to Orca's island, Washington.

My friend Jocelyn from the Otesha tour last year met up with me when I got there and we biked back through rolling, steep, long hills with stunning views of turquoise water and crumbling cliffs smothered in evergreens to the Bullocks Brothers Permaculture Homestead. This farm takes 10 interns a year that work on various projects as a group to learn as much as they can about permaculture farming, a method of farming where the goal is to be completely self sustaining. We ate good, fresh food - greens taken from the garden and rainbow trout caught from a nearby lake and mushrooms from under the blueberry patch, and I met some amazing people. The interns work 4 days on, 3 days off, and most mornings there is a project supervised by one of the 3 brothers who owns the farm - while I was there we cleaned up and made sure the drip irrigation system was working - a system that used gravity to pull water down a slope from holding tanks to only water plants that need to be watered.

Individual or smaller projects are worked on in the afternoon, like gardening and composting and sewing. Jocelyn was learning so much, from organic farming to welding to compost tea spraying to building to tree grafting to chicken tractors. What's a chicken tractor?

Only the coolest concept ever - a mobile chicken coop that fits over a row of garden that needs to be turned over - just move it over the new spot that needs turning, sprinkle a little grain in, and the chickens scratch the old vegetation up, turning it into the ground as they peck at it and search for food. Their manure is also worked into the garden. In a few days you collect the eggs they've laid, move the coop, and they do it all over again. What an efficient way to use animals.

Each night on the island we had a musical jamming session with singing and drums, didgeridooing, guitars, and even a makeshift base that was made from a big old overturned tin bucket, with the bottom centre tied to a long string attached to a stick that kept the string taut. Makes me want to learn how to sing or play guitar!

Unfortunately, it was pretty cold at night and I didn't have enough clothing to really keep myself warm - had to borrow some of Joc's clothes, which worries me - I'll have to pick up some more before hitting the mountains. Thankfully Joc let me sleep in her big double bed - under a duvet and a tarp for warmth! I really liked sleeping "out in the open" - I've never done it before, beats waking up to that sticky, too-warm feeling you get in a tent in the morning.

The ride from Orca's to Andrew's place in Vancouver was a bit of a gong show - just a long day really. A 45 minute ride up over those hills again to the ferry terminal at Orca's, 2 hour ferry ride, 15 minute drive to the ferry to Vancouver, lucked out with an early ferry sailing to Vancouver, rode through Ladner and waited an hour for a shuttle (after being told it didn't exist and the bus would pick me up, the shuttle eventually did appear) to take me across the Massey tunnel, got ridiculously disoriented in Richmond - couldn't find my way onto the Oak St bridge with the directions from the map I had and went through getting lost twice, a Spanish man with very little english to two hotel front desk clerks to a waitress before I found my way across the bridge into Vancouver, where the route marked on the bike route wasn't possible to take (no left turns allowed, no crosswalk on a 6 lane street!!) and finally made it to Andrew's house at around 6:00 - then had to go to his work to get the key and come back before I collapsed into the shower. I had a good dinner with Wil, and then talked with Andrew until 1 or 2. Now it's off to Stanley Park with Mary Anne!

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I didn't actually get much sleep - too excited and I had restless legs to boot. hehe. I tried sleeping on the plane but again I was way too hyped up and nervous about putting my bike back together (especially since Megan, who helped me pack it up, said that it was the hardest packing job she's ever done on a bike!!). I had good company on the planes (toronto, edmonton, then victoria) and lo and behold, my bike and bags actually made it to the airport.

They actually have a little shelter with a bike stand and air pump for putting bikes together at the Victoria airport! I took a picture of my bike just after I put my head set and seat on... looks pretty pathetic:

When all was said and done, it took me 2 and a half hours to get that puppy back into working shape (well, roughly working) but I relaxed and played music and was careful about it.

I met two french guys biking from here to Rimouski, Quebec this summer who lent me their pump - should have stayed longer to chat, but I was hungry and tired and anxious to be on my way!! Anna and I will take Alice (my bike) to her favourite bike shop in Victoria tomorrow just to give it a final checkover before I feel totally comfortable riding it.

I found my way to Anna's house by going along the lochside and galloping goose trails, beautiful trails for bikers, horseback riders, walkers, and runners. I cannot BELIEVE the number of people on bikes!!! They are everywhere! And they have nice GEAR! And nice bikes! One thing I found strange was that everyone had on jackets and tights - I was in shorts and a tank top. I stopped another biker to get some route advice and he asked me, "aren't you COLD??" I guess everyone here is used to it being a little warmer than Wolfville in the spring... hahaha!

So anyways, my bike looks fine, and I am tired but happy - I couldn't believe how gorgeous it was on the way here. One scary thing: it was clear enough all the way across the Rockies to see all the mountains... and they never ended... ever... they just kept going... and they were so snowy... ahhhh!!!

Need more clothes!!

Day 1, week 1... VICTORIA!!! remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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First I went on a 97 km ride, fully loaded, with no bike shoes to clip into my bike with. Not because I’m insane, but because I left my shoes back in Bridgewater when I went home to visit this weekend. I did meet some interesting people, including a man who began to tell me the whole sordid story of his pushy and religious in-laws (a narrow escape) and a woman in her early forties who’s husband had known my aunts growing up - I ended up riding with her until we parted ways at the bottom of North Mountain. She had some good advice about living and learning I was happy to hear at this point in my life! I also finally got a picture of that sign that makes me laugh so hard I have to stop biking on the number 1 highway on the way into Coldbrook from Berwick.

The infamous sign

So I chugged up North mountain with all of this crap on my bike, because I needed to know that I could do it. Seeing my bike with all of its gear on it now, I think I should have added a few rocks into the mix, but as it was I was fine - all except for the backs of my knees, where an old frisbee (sorry - disc) injury decided to flare up and hasn’t actually gone away yet. I got some beautiful, beautiful pictures of clouds up on North mountain, so it was kind of worth it. I also got to go to the look off, which is definitely worth it - I love that view.

Clouds near Halls Harbour

Just me and my bike

The rest of this week I spent trying to heal my leg, going on very short rides and trying to help Jenny find a new road bike. Now I’m throwing everything I need for the trip into my paniers and I’m finally done organizing our route and contacts and map binder. We have a good half inch’s worth of planning in that binder. I keep going through everything in my paniers, trying to find something to leave behind - my bike is so heavy! But I can’t seem to make any decisions today. It’ll have to be done on the way.

My new biking shoes!

Tomorrow I pack up Alice the Velociraptor (my bike!), go into Halifax to visit my friend Try Hard and aunt Joni, and then my plane leaves the next morning at 6:30! Eek!

I’ve included the mileage I’ve done so far this year - almost 2000 km inside and outside since January!

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The first ride I did this week was a loaded (very short!) ride to Evangeline Beach and back - you can see in this picture the view of Blomidon again... I’ll never get tired of looking at that cliff.

Josh M. and I ended out happily sunning ourself on the grass in front of the beach... ahh, the joys of being spontaneous. Unfortunately, the joy of peeing didn’t cross my mind until it was way too late and I could barely get onto my bike... and then it was the joy of peeing in a stranger’s house when I couldn’t make it past civilization to a nice fat tree in the woods!!

My bike all loaded up.

Next trip Josh E. and I decided to do HILLS. This is an exceptionally easy thing to plan in Wolfville because the town basically sits between two ridges, the South and North Mountain. We zig-zagged back and forth over the South Mountain and managed to climb about 6 or 7 fairly decent sized hills in . I enjoyed this ride way more than I thought I would - I didn’t put any extra weight onto my bike and booting it down those hills is more than enough reward for the climb up!

Josh and I stopped to see two muskrats playing in the Gaspereau River - swimming up against the current and then tumbling around in the shallows. MAN they are cute!! We could hear peepers, and red-winged blackbirds, and the smell of manure tells me that summer is coming....

The next day, my friend Shaina came down to visit from Toronto, and her and our friend Jenny went back down into the Gaspereau Valley to do an afternoon of biking... turned into a kind of scary adventure when the back tire on the road bike my aunt lent me last year Jenny was riding just.... stopped turning. Jenny had to jump off the bike at the last second to avoid falling! When I tried to fix the gears, the back tire seized up even more, and then as I was carrying the bike to a better spot to get a closer look, the back tire just... fell... off. !!! The quick release just gave out. I felt pretty good about being able to fix it, but by the time I was done, I was worried about why it had broken, and my hands were completely coated in a thick layer of black grease that would not come off, no matter how hard I scrubbed them in a little roadside stream with sand.

Again, the kindness of strangers saved me... we stopped at Reid’s Meats and I washed my hands amongst all sorts of half-butchered meat and then we asked a few fisher-people who were fishing smelt in the Gaspereau River for a wrench to adjust a screeching rubbing fender.

We stopped to watch them fishing - the number of fish was INSANE! It was like those accounts of the Grand Banks in Newfoundland - the river was just choked with little silvery bodies.

My three bikes - Alice the Velociraptor (my trek 520 touring), Joy (Miyata 110 touring) and Tiger (trek 700 hybrid).

Then Jenny and Shaina and I discovered the joy of jumping off the bridge (hahaha, onto the pavement.... not the river below!).

Jenny

Shaina

Me!

I went to one of my last spinning classes yesterday and realized how much I’m going to miss them - joking around in the gym and having Kerri yell, “you’re doing awesome!! PUSH PUSH PUSH!” at us.

12 days until I get on that plane!!

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The next day dad and I headed out for a ride to Blue Rocks in Lunenburg. It was a beautiful and sunny (if somewhat windy) day, and we biked to my uncle John’s cabin to have lunch by the sea.

Dad looks back from the top of the hill.

We found some amazing green lichens - so bright!!.

I can’t help but take lots of pictures of beautiful things!

Nova Scotia has such character.

I took this quick shot and was really pleased with how it turned out - usually I rely on the beauty of the object in the picture to carry it along, but the elements in this picture came together so well!

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On April 4 I set out to Grafton, a tiny little town beyond Kentville. I wanted to get 80 km under my belt but ended up only making it to 74 by the time I got back home. When I’m alone on my bike and just riding in a big loop, sometimes it’s hard to find the push to keep going - so I always bring my camera, because I keep thinking, “maybe there’s a neat picture around the next corner... at the top of that hill... if I turn up this road here!” A few times I had to hop off my bike to snap a shot or two - these are some of my favourites:

A lonely swing and beautiful yellow strands of a willow tree

My bike...

Tree bent and cut to show the headwind I was fighting against - this is why we will travel west to east - with the prevailing wind across Canada!!

The next ride I did (April 9) I managed to convince myself that I should probably add some weight to my bike, but I just couldn’t bring myself to add too much - seems crazy to just throw random things in my paniers to weigh them down when I don’t have to. It’s the first time I’ve ridden with all 4 paniers, my front basket, and my fold-up chair. Don’t laugh, I love my chair! Max had one during Otesha, and I was inspired and got one to save my back - all day on a bike and then trying to support yourself all night around a campfire or eating dinner is rough. The extra weight is so, so worth it.

This trip was amazing. Not only was it the warmest day of the year so far, I had forgotten just how beautiful the view of Blomidon is from the secondary road on the way to Hantsport.

As I was cycling past a particularly gorgeous view, I saw two men enjoying it from their porch and I called out, “Can you BELIEVE we live here!??” They called back, “Pretty amazing in’nit!?” I love that we instantly understood each other. Everyone here is so friendly; everyone waves and says hello. It’s such a completely different feeling from the privacy-sphere most people seem to exude when they’re in a city.

The view and a farm down the hill from where I called out to the men on the porch

Anyways, I settled down to eat my lunch in a sunny park in Hantsport, laughing to myself when I realized that I was actually happy that I had packed my paniers more than I usually do - because I had remembered to bring a book! (My sister and I are both addicted to reading while we eat). I ended up only cycling for 50 km, but what a treat to be out on such a sunny, warm day.

The view I had while I ate my lunch

My latest ride was today, and was the second longest ride I’ve ever done - 96.5 km round trip (however, Mary Anne and I’s ride to Doaktown, 95 km in a constant headwind, fully loaded bikes, and sharing the trailer, was no doubt more challenging)! Josh and I headed out to Ayelsford, about 45 km from Wolfville, depending on how you get there. It was colder than we expected, but sunny, and we were in good spirits - the highway is flat, and we were battling a headwind that promised smooth sailing on the way back. This is the only picture I took the entire trip - cows on top of their own manure pile... soaking up the heat maybe?

We had to laugh when we biked past the rest of the house - just around the corner there was a german shepherd on top of his doghouse - maybe the animals were comparing notes!?
We had a great ride - I’m pooped now, but during the trip I felt like someone was constantly injecting me with liquid energy. It makes such a difference biking with a friend. My stomach is sore from laughing, from the cows on the manure pile, to the sign we saw on the side of the road (“Babies are a gift!! From: God.”) to Josh insisting that we were in Berwick when there was a post office proclaiming “Ayelsford” right across the road.

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When I was nearing Canning a little border collie bounded up the road at me, and I stopped my bike to say hello and check out “her” sheep in the field - babies everywhere! You always discover new life on bike adventures. That’s one reason why I love it.

The real treat of the trip was when I saw a flock of birds near upper Cunard and veered off the path I planned to take onto a side road. When I turned the corner and got up over the crest of the hill, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were literally thousands of gulls (NOT sea gulls, thanks for the clarification from my animal behaviour prof Dave Shutler at Acadia) chowing down on a single pile of some sort of refuse or manure. I dropped my bike at the side of the field, and started up the path towards the pile. Suddenly I stopped and thought to myself, is this a crazy idea!?? There are thousands of birds in a reallllly concentrated area... that’s a lot of falling, liquid poo...

But then I reconsidered - “I’m a biologist dammit, I don’t care about poo!” and kept heading towards the birds. They let me get very close, and I snapped pictures like crazy as I walked toward them. Every so often they would spook, stop vocalizing, and the air would fill with the sound of thousands of wings flapping - birds flying over top of me in all directions. It was absolutely amazing, I have never experienced anything remotely like it in my life. It reminded me of why I got into biology in the first place.

Eventually the gulls took off and a group of several thousand starlings replaced them on the compost heap. What a sight. Where gulls seem to have no rhyme or reason to where they fly, starlings are more like schools of fish in how they move through the air. It was breathtaking to see all these tiny little birds zooming around in perfect synchrony - landing, chattering, lifting off, the sound of their wings like distant muted thunder.

I was smiling all the way to my spinning class, where I forgot to bring running shoes for our usual post-bike arena stairs run, and socks as well. I was half way up the hill towards home to grab them when I realized I didn’t have a key to the house, so back down I went (I ended up borrowing a pair from a friend). After the spinning class, Josh and I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and run outside for the first time this year - we didn’t go far, but I couldn’t believe how tired my legs were (maybe something to do with the 70 km of biking I had done so far??? who knows)!

Altogether a wonderful day.

First real bike trip of the year... remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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So training has taken shape in two ways: winter biking (a new venture for me) and spinning classes at the gym. Both are awesome in their own ways.

Winter biking involves what I have now dubbed my "IMPERVIOUS SUIT" - a small hat and fleece that goes around my neck, double-layered, waterproof, lined gortex gloves, crazy amount of sweaters and waterproof jacket, waterproof pants and ankle high waterproof boots. Along with my fenders on the hybrid I've had since I was 12 or 13 (her name is "Tiger" - as in, "you can do it Tiger!"), I feel like I am impervious to any weather conditions Wolfville can throw at me.

I also wear red lights on the back and white lights on the front of my bike, along with reflectors most of the time. Even so I've been yelled at by a homeless-looking man to get on the sidewalk (isn't that illegal?) Anyways, I've braved -16 °C weather, scary icy slush (just go slow and make sure your brakes are connected- woops), blowing snow, and cold rain so far. Most of the time I have to slow down on my way down hills because my face gets too cold, but my latest solution to this problem is to just open my mouth really wide and scream so that a greater amount of my face gets scrunched inside the warmth of my hat and fleecy neck warmer. It might look crazy, but it works. I have the opposite problem on the way up hills - I am madly trying to work my zippers apart with one hand with my gloves shoved into my mouth.

Spinning is unlike anything I have ever done before. The Acadia gym offers spinning 5 times a week, and I go to four of them weekly. We have three different instructors who all have different styles, but in general we do a quick warm up, drills, and then a cool down with lots of stretching.

The first thing I noticed about spinning was that excluding one time I sat in a sweat lodge for 20 minutes, I have NEVER sweat so profusely in my entire life. We're up to 8 minute drills now, and yesterday an actual STREAM of sweat careened down my arm and soaked the floor beside my bike. Delicious. I do love the fact that someone else is motivating me to work my hardest, and it's a lot easier to challenge yourself when 10-odd other people are doing it there beside you. Usually after spinning, my spinning buddy and I run 25 sets of stairs in the hockey arena (it's lovely and cold in there) to round out the evening. I'm still playing Ultimate frisbee once or twice a week, but still I wonder... will it be enough?

Hopefully the temperature will start rising soon and I'll be able to put some mileage on Alice, my touring bike.

Here's to warm weather and sunshine!

Winter biking remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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So last summer as you might know, I joined up with the Otesha project (www.otesha.ca) East Coast Tour. We travelled around the southern parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, performing a play and putting on workshops to inspire people to create local and global change through their everyday consumer choices. I love theatre, I love community living, and I love amazing people, so this was the opportunity of a lifetime! If you EVER get the chance to help someone join Otesha or do one of the tours yourself, I highly recommend it. The only thing was, I kept feeling like I wanted more time to take pictures... explore the towns we were in, and see more of my country.

After Otesha, I kept thinking about biking across Canada, something I never would have had the confidence for before the tour, but also something I had been thinking about for a few years - ever since Brennan and I had talked about biking across the country and doing presentations about species at risk! I chatting with Mary Anne (from Otesha) one day online and when I asked her what her summer plans were, she mentioned biking across Canada! After a few weeks wondering whether we were crazy, and finding out if we could actually afford the time, we made it official! Our trip will take us from Vancouver to Halifax in three months. Right now I'm still looking for a few more things like clothes and camping gear and tarps, and places to stay along the way (we will be camping, but are looking for roofs to stay under as much as possible).

I've never planned a trip like this before, and I am having so much fun. I can't wait to visit friends in Victoria and Vancouver, see sand sculptures, visit hot springs, finally see the prairies, and climb many, many mountains!

Mary Anne and I hide under a gazebo with other Oteshaites when hail hit during our first day in Otesha... July 1.

Mary Anne in Miramichi with the trailer we shared through 95 km and a headwind...

On my way to Sussex with the trailer!

How it all began remains copyright of the author Ericabikes, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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