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One Tree Hill "If you think Alberta is flat, just
wait till you see Saskatchewan and Manitoba!"
A good distance from the forest phone, we arrived at Moon Lake campground. There were no phones. We set up on a wonderful 'no service' site - crushed rock, packed as hard as concrete. "I think I need a sledgehammer to get these tent stakes in," I said. Unfortunately, we were fresh out of sledgehammers. The vestibule fluttered over the door. I zipped it, and hoped we weren't going to awake to water beds. At 3:30 am a major bombardment from the heavens began. Thunder resonated like sonic booms. Lightning zigged in dazzling white brilliance. Like peacefully sleeping troops, we hadn't suspected a thing. When we retired, harsh orange moonlight had illuminated the area like an arc-sodium street lamp. In contrast, with the barrage underway, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face - except when flashes of lightning lit the tent, and my fingers, with the power of million-watt strobe lights.
The morning sun shone weakly. The temperature hovered in single digits. It had rained hard - mud lay splattered a foot up the tent walls. "The day's off to a stellar start," Sharon remarked, flapping her hands so vigorously I thought she was trying to shake off her extremities. "It's so cold my fingers are tingling." We packed up and pushed our bikes down a forest path looking for a breakfast spot in the sun. Fog swirled amongst a labyrinth of tangled thicket; sun filtered through gauzy mist, splaying light like a movie projector in a smoke-filled room. In a quarter of a kilometre, we arrived at a large picnic shelter. "Here's where we should have set up last night," Sharon decided, surveying the interior's capacious and dry confines. While eating pancakes smothered in butter-flavoured real imitation maple syrup, the sun burned off the ground clouds. After running out of batter, we gathered enough courage to venture forth. The forest still dripped from the liquid shelling. Our route rambled through a sun-dappled forest. Light rays streaked through evergreen boughs like shafts of glittery diamonds. The magical scene and sparse traffic buoyed our spirits. We putted along - never quite fast enough to fully warm up - feeling as though we were traversing our own private bike path. In too short a time we arrived at Clear Lake and the village of Wasagaming, which we promptly renamed Walkamileinmy-moccasins. (Like they say: Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins. Good advice. That way, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes.) Vacationers toodled around town on balloon-tired cruiser bikes. Bathing suit clad families swam along the beach, searching for shade. Sunscreened youngsters paddled about on air mattresses. And there we were, shivering, swaddled in long pants and fleece pullovers. Caught in a cobweb-like sunbeam, we lolled on a park's grass, rallying our body temperatures while quaffing litre containers of warm fruit juice. A couple strolled over. Joanne and Lance, from Winnipeg, were touring cyclists on a car vacation. "We tried cycling to Halifax last summer," Lance said, his face strained. "But our trip ended when I injured my Achilles tendon. All the cold rain did it in." Joanne's eyes were big and bright. "Our next trip is going to be to Vancouver." They inspected our bikes and accompanying mountain of gear. "We have a Trek tandem," Lance said. "And we love it ... but we can't carry anywhere near the amount of stuff you two have." He hoisted my bike barely an inch off the ground. "Your loads are astonishing!" "Yeah," I agreed. "We're the Winnebagos of cycle tourists. Funny thing is, we're actually pared down quite well compared to previous trips. You should have seen what we carried when we cycled across the States! We're practically tent trailers compared to then." Joanne and Lance exhorted our accomplishment. Their cheerfulness and enthusiasm warmed our hearts. Leaving them to plan their next excursion, we pressed on, and rode out of Riding Mountain National Park. Like stepping through an exit after a wondrous Disney ride, we left our magical surrounds and were deposited back onto bald prairie. No trees. No corners. No hills. Except one. The road jogged, tumbled over a small bump next to a lone tree, then resumed, flat and straight as an arrow. "Just because it was there?" I asked, gaping back at the insignificant rise. "Good to see road engineers have a sense of imagination," Sharon laughed. A blue sign indicated picnic tables ahead. We left the pavement and cycled a muddy path half a kilometre without tripping across the promised tables. A half-kilometre farther, I spotted an outhouse. I dropped my bike onto the mucky earth and rushed to the biffy. Pushing the door open, a two-foot high charred mess greeted me. Someone had enjoyed a roaring campfire - right in the middle of the privy. With the amount of ash and blackened remains it was amazing the entire structure hadn't burnt down. "Interesting picnic area," Sharon said upon my return. "There's not one table." "They burned 'em in the toilet." I forayed into the bush - the outhouse was unusable, after all - and glimpsed a table, hidden in a clump of trees. "Hey!" I called. "I found one the vandals missed." We squelched through bog and knee-high wet grass, over broken glass and heaps of trash, to reach the coveted table. Our reward? Hordes of bloodsucking mosquitoes! "Let's get out of here!" Sharon screeched, flapping her arms like an overzealous bat as the little vampires attacked her. Abandoning any thoughts of eating, we beat a hasty retreat - or at least as quick as the mud allowed. "Maybe we should get mountain bikes?" I puffed, sliding off the slippery path. Back on Highway 10 traffic became ugly. Visions of rejoining route 16, the Yellowhead Highway, with its smooth and wide shoulder was all that kept us going. After almost getting plastered head-on for the umpteenth time by careless drivers passing the vehicle in front of them, I shouted, "Folks on the way to the park sure are in a hurry to get there!" "Yep!" Sharon snorted. "So they can start relaxing!" Streams of traffic hurtled past - slowing neither one iota, nor moving over one fraction. A car stormed past, narrowly missing us. Sharon raged. "If they have to slow down two seconds - forget it! They don't care whether they kill us or not!" Her words hanging in the air like noxious exhaust, a honkin' Ford Thunderbird swerved into our lane, intent on overtaking another sedan. The driver careened straight toward us. Feeling like a rodent being dive-bombed by an eagle, I flipped the oncoming road hog the bird. Nothing like one final act of defiance. "Hit the ditch!" Sharon screamed. Hearts in our mouths, we veered onto the gravel shoulder, missing becoming dead meat by scant metres. "They really ought to take away some licenses!" Sharon fumed, wobbling back onto the road edge. "Or at least charge more for the box of cereal they got them out of," I sputtered. Blood pressure rocketing skyward, we intersected the Yellowhead. A major highway, it boasted a wide paved shoulder that allowed us to keep a tolerable distance from the obnoxious speeding metal behemoths. I glanced over my shoulder and sneered. We had survived Highway 10. I shouldn't have been so hasty. In a few kilometres we hit the cyclists' dreaded road condition: construction. Our paved shoulder disintegrated beneath a layer of loose gravel. Compounding our misery, a headwind bucked into us, blowing dust from every passing vehicle into our watering and stinging eyes. A sign warned: Slow down. Save your windshield. Autos roared past. Peppermint-sized pebbles spit from beneath their tires like machine gun fire. We tucked our heads. Gravel bounced off our headgear. Windshield, hell, I thought. What about my glasses? "Another use for helmets!" I yelled to Sharon. "I need a break!" she called back. Black olive thunderclouds, draped in beetle-browed satanic faces, blotted out the sun. Shivering and famished - exhausted from battling the headwind and drained from dodging pea-brained drivers - we pulled into a Minnedosa gas station. Just how much more of this fun can we take? I wondered. |
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