Yeah finally camping!!!

Well after a very late start on Friday, I am now ahead of where I should be thanks to an iron butt day today. I made it from White River to Atikoken yesterday, and stayed at the Branch Seine Lodge. One of the guys that I work with, his sister and her husband own the fishing and hunting lodge, and were kind enough to put me up for the night and feed me!! It was just off the road I was taking so it worked out extremely well. So I made up some mileage by doing another 650kms yesterday.

Quite the eventful day today! I left the lodge about 9am and could already tell it was going to be a scorchingly hot day. An hour or so into my ride I came upon a 5 to 10 km stretch of highway where they had removed the asphalt to replace it. Most of the ride was ok until I came flying up on a stretch where they had just laid about 8 inches of fresh gravel, with some lovely semi truck tracks in it. Had a frantic few seconds with the bike whipping back and forth and me doing a tank slapper, until I finally got the bike stopped. I have NO idea how I did not wipe the bike out!!! I have never been so grateful to see paved road than at the end of that!!

I made my goal of reaching Winnipeg, and then called Matthew. After our chat I decided that I would really like to make it to Jasper in two days rather than three if I could, that way I could have a day of rest before heading out on the bike again. With 1700kms still to go it would be two pretty long days, unless I could continue on and rack up a few more miles today. So having already done ~550kms I heading out into the blazing sun once again....lol.... I figured if I could do another 200kms it would leave two 750kms days.

Second rule of travelling: don’t pass by a really nice accommodation because you want to achieve another 50kms!! 50kms later I was in the middle of no where... Over an hour later, I finally came upon a really nice, and remarkably inexpensive, camping site right next to the highway as the sun was just about to go down. $15 for a spot on the grass!! The end result was about 950kms today!! Now I have under 1400kms to get to Jasper, and two totally reasonable days.