August 16, 2012
I hear rustling in the tent, take off my sleep mask and I’m shocked at how bright it is in the tent. It’s morning and Murray is stirring, eager to get up. I lay in my sleeping bag until I hear him getting breakfast started.
Diefenbaker Lake
It is a glorious day, the sun is shining, there is no wind (yet), the water in the lake is quiet, and the occasional fish jumps and makes a splash. As we eat breakfast we decide to go for a 30 km ride from the campground back north on the route we drove down yesterday. We choose that direction just in case the wind is again blowing from the NW once we get up out of the river valley.
As we ride up the long hill onto the flat prairie, we discover the wind is actually blowing from the SW, but not too hard. I ride in Murray’s draft the whole way so we can keep the pace high. The truckers and the traffic in general must not see very many cyclists as they all give us a wide berth, to a vehicle they move over completely into the oncoming lane. Very gentlemanly of them! We turn around at the 20 km mark and head into the wind looking forward to the downhill rush into the campground. The downhill thrill is over much too fast and we are back at our campsite.
Pack up and head to Swift Current to find a coffee shop with free WIFI. We end up at the Urban Ground Coffeehouse, a great place with funky modern décor and music to suit the taste of any hard-core folk music festival attendee. Murray has hot chocolate and I have iced tea. We post the first post and are off.
The drive to Cypress Hills Provincial Park (on the Alberta side) is along Hwy 1. A totally boring road kept in immaculate condition but solely constructed for making time. It is so boring we are reduced to making up goofy stories about the cows, horses and sheep that we see along the way. Did you know that Saskatchewan is home to the very rare Saskatchewan Resting Cow? (I’ll leave it at that)
We land our mobile campsite in Reesor Lake Campground. A small but very cozy campground with only about 40 sites. The road is like driving a rally car route up down, eeee, right left, zig zag, oooo, up down. We are at elevation and it is getting too cold for my fingers to work on the keyboard. Goodnight.