Day 19 - Gull Lake to Swift Current

Hello Again,

We awoke early today and the wind was blowing really hard already. It kept shaking the tent which makes the condensation on the inside of the tent form into drops and fall on us. We started packing up around 5:45 in hopes of beating the rain forecast for this afternoon. While we were packing up a man drove up to our site and talked for a bit - he was the owner or employee of the park. After talking for a bit he told us not to worry about paying for the site! Unfortunately, we had already put the money in the slot in the office. It was only ten dollars and it was a nice little campground so we weren't to broken up about it.

Shot of the campsite

Different Angle

Tent kite!

We were on the road around 7am and the wind was blowing like crazy when got out of the town and onto the highway. Unfortunately it was a headwind and a little bit of a crosswind. The 60km into Swift Current felt like hundreds. We were in our easiest few gears all day and just put our heads down and kept on pedaling. The wind seemed to get stronger as the day went on and it would frequently gust which made it nearly impossible to drive in a straight line. What should have been an easy two hours to bike the 60km into Swift Current ended up taking over five hours. Our average speed was a whopping 11.59km/h - far lower than our toughest day in the mountains! It was a tough day not only physically but mentally too.

Anyways, enough complaining about the wind...we finally made it to Swift Current where we took our first pictures of our days ride. Our original plan was to restock food in Swift Current and continue on to one of the next towns. We were exhausted so we started biking around the city looking for a motel. We left the Trans Canada and followed signs for the city centre. Turns out all of the motels are near the highway so we headed back to the Trans Canada and headed further east. We stopped at a few motels and chose the cheapest one.

Made it!

I want to be in the picture too!

While Patricia was inside the motel checking in a lady approached me and asked if I was from Ontario. My brain wasn't working at full speed after today's ride so I just hmm'd and haa'd while I tried to figure out how she knew where I was from. She then said her and her husband were related to Patricia! Turns out they had seen our blog on facebook and had been following our progress so when they saw a tandem bike while passing on the highway they turned around to see if it was us - quite the coincidence. She was running errands so we told her our room number and we made plans to meet up later.

We then went and got groceries and settled into our room. A little while later Betty(whom we met earlier) and her husband Pat knocked on our door. We talked for a bit then they offered to take us out for Chinese food - an offer we certainly couldn't refuse after today's ride. We rode in their van and we were surprisingly excited to ride in a motorized vehicle - the first time since we left Vancouver. Dinner was delicious and we both ate too much(it was a buffet) - thanks guys! They drove us back our room and we watched TV and relxed while we let our stomachs digest all the food.

We decided that tomorrow is going to be a rest day! It will be our first rest day that wasn't forced on us by bad weather so we're pretty excited. The rest of our night was pretty uneventful - Patricia went to bed early and I stayed up pretty late watching TV.

Oh, and a quick aside: JD whom we met a while back emailed us the picture of him, Mark and us at Rogers Pass. He took it with the timer on his camera so we could all get in the shot...it turned out really good, here it is:

L to R: Mark, JD, Chris, Patricia

Signing off,
Chris and Patricia.