Trip

Though many more were going to the wedding, a friend of mine (Ray) and I opted to get there by motorcycle.

The first day of the trip, we awoke to rain. We were going to start out from Killarney, MB at about 8:30 am and comfortably reach Saskatoon, SK. That plan changed. The rain lifted at about 2 pm and we left at around 2:30. The weather was still quite miserable and we had suited up with thermal clothing and gloves but not rain gear. It was cold, windy and it spat some rain. We had lunch at Tower Pizza in Estavan SK by which time the bikes were quite filthy and we were cold and wet. By late day the weather had lifted but the air was cold. We pushed on to and through Regina and stopped at a campground at Craven. Some big music fesitval was just starting up but we didn't care.

Thanks to Ray's cell phone we could check the weather conditions and forecast in cities we were going to travel through and realize that though it was sunny, it wasn't too warm and we'd have a nasty head-wind. We pushed off anyway at 8:20 and rode the whole day, ending up in Edmonton at about 6pm. Lunch in Saskatoon and gas every 160 km's were our stops. We camped north of St. Albert which is north of Edmonton.

The highway was fairly unevenful except for the semi tractor who blew a tire ahead of us. We were being pelted by some particles of something, like it was kicking up big sand and all of a sudden he's slowing way down and pulling over and his tire had blown out. And there was the guy at the 7-Eleven gas station who gave us some story about needing gas and on and on. He seemed kinda fishy and when he realized we weren't going to give him any, he got a bit violent chuckin' his jerry can around so we just rode off.

On the way back, we had sunny skies and a 25 kph tail wind. The canola was blooming and haw was being baled. We camped just out of Regina, having supper at a microbrewery/bar/restaurant. I had their own Crooked Swath brew, it was quite good. Another good day followed and I was back home.