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July 22 Friday Bicycle touring from Medicine Hat Alberta to Cypress Hills Alberta We get up at 6:30 AM, load up our bikes and head for the hills -- Cypress Hills, that is. Susan had a flat as we left Medicine Hat. I had one yesterday. There is lots of broken glass everywhere, on the bike trails, on the main roads; perhaps, instead of being known by the nickname Gas City, it should be called Glass City. Partway to Cypress Hills, we meet Dirk, a German cyclist, who's living in Kelowna and working at Albert's Pancake House in Orchard Park Mall. He tells us he did 170 kilometres yesterday on his mountain bike. He has a large teddy bear strapped to his bike's rear rack and he subsists on Smarties. He's headed for Ontario. About the only time we stop cycling is when Vicky has to stop and feed some white horses that are along the road. We climb 2090 feet today. Trip record so far. The Cypress Hills are the highest elevation between the Rockies and the East. The townsite of Elkwater is 1234 metres. The French fur traders mistook the lodgepole pine for Jack pine, which is "cypre" in French, and the English translated it poorly as usual into Cypress. Cypress has never grown here. I still think they should have left the original Indian name for it which translates into Thunder Breeding Grounds. Now that's a name. We have popsicles, then I try a Cherry Screamer which is a slush with ice cream in it. Somehow it is mixed wrong -- no sugar was put in so it is severely tart, to say the least. Pucker up and die. I end up getting a refund ... after eating all the ice cream, of course. We buy wieners and marshmallows and head for the campsite. There are over 700 sites and most are taken. The check-in folks try to send us to some "beautiful" walk-in sites that are a mere 14 kilometres away -- all uphill. We decline and opt for the west end by the lake. This is the most uphill Susan has cycled in one day and she says she needs a stretcher. I think she could probably get by with a wheelchair. We buy firewood for $6 a bag and roast our wieners. More of the government user-pay plan. Is it just me? Or are there are a lot less camp fires this year? The government spent over $1 million on firewood last year. And it just goes the way government money usually does -- up in smoke. We go for a hike on the Firerock Trail. Exceptional views overlook the lake. We hike through a forest of poplar and pine. Thousands of wild flowers. I didn't see any Cypress though. Surprisingly, to me at least, there are no bugs at our site. It sure is wonderful to sit outside and not get chewed to death by the irritating little buggers. Our evening entertainment consists of listening to the guitar man in the next site who is wailing out songs by Glen Campbell and others. Better than TV. Lots of stars to gaze at too. The moon is full. I can't imagine what it must be like in absolute inky blackness. Riding time today was five hours. The wind was slightly behind us, which helped. I didn't feel we were going uphill much with the wind's assistance. |
