Day 15 - Bassano to Medicine Hat

Hello Again,

This morning we kind of slept in and slowly packed up and were on the road around 9. Our room was on the second floor so it was kind of a pain carrying the bike and trailer down ... it was worth it to have the bike and all of our stuff in the room though(we always sleep much better when its close by). Anyways, we only saw one or two cars go by while we were getting ready. There really isn't too much in downtown Bassano. Below you can see a shot down the main drag - the restaurant we ate at last night is on the right. It was a neat little town though and everyone we met was friendly - one lady even offered us a place to stay when she overheard us telling the waiter about our trip(we had already checked into the hotel though).

Downtown Bassano.

Downtown the other way.

The weather forecast for today predicted rain most of the day in Medicine Hat and even thunderstorms in the afternoon. So, we were on high alert expecting rain. The skies around us definitely looked like rain at several points during the day but we got lucky and remained dry for the entire day.

Patricia is on the left.

A shot of the bad skies

We stopped for a rest break and the odometer stopped at exactly 100.00. This is really exciting for two reasons. First, its the praries so we don't see too many exciting things during the day. And two, we stop for rest breaks whenever there is a sign pole or something to lean our bike against and these are few and far between on a flat straight highway.

A highlight of our day

More crazy looking skies

Good shoulders!

Theres an entire train in this picture on the horizon.

For most of the time today we had the coveted prairie tail wind which was awesome. At some points during the day we were cruising along at nearly 40km/h. The highway was also pretty flat today and we can count on one hand the number of times we had to go up a hill. Also, the mosquitoes were pretty bad a few times when we stopped but, near the end of the day they were even getting us while we riding. Because we had a tailwind the mosquitoes just had to float in the wind and they'd be going at the same speed as us so it wasn't too hard for them to get us. These clever mosquitos only lasted about half an hour which we were thankful for.

Eventually we made it to Medicine Hat!

Made it!

We read in our Alberta guide book that there was a campground right off the highway in Medicine Hat. We took the wrong cut off for it but thats OK since it brought us right by a Subway so we grabbed subs for supper. We eventually found the campground and got a site. Getting the site consisted of talking to a guy on his porch.

Our campsite.

We were really roughing it at this campground - we had to walk about two minutes to get a Mc Flurry from McDonalds. And our site faces a giant water slide in a hotel next to the campground - we could hear the excited screams from our tent. We checked the forecast for tomorrow and it looks like rain and thunder showers so fingers crossed they are wrong.

Our progress thus far.

Well thats all for now folks,

C&P