Stories

Ride from Saskatoon to Dauphin August 10, 2000 © Darrell Noakes Well, I'm back, and all those endorphins released during a week of riding out in the open country have me feeling just great (not to mention the occasional adrenaline rush caused by RV'ers who don't know how wide their vehicles are)! This is an account of a trip two families and I made with from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to Dauphin, Manitoba from July 29 - August 8, 2000. I first heard from Jaquie earlier in the summer when she contacted me for route information. She had found some of my postings on the touring@phred.org mailing list. Three years ago, the family began a tour across Canada (three weeks at a time) and this year's leg would take them from Saskatoon to a family reunion in Austin, not far from Winnipeg. As it turned out, Colleen and I had plans to be in Dauphin for the annual Ukrainian festival. I'd always wanted to tour this route. Finding someone to ride down with was a dream come true. I offered to tag along on the trip. Our group would be Jaquie, Rob and their two teenage children Robert and Stacy from Kelowna, Jaquie's brother, Ian and his young son, Chris from Saskatoon, and me. First Day We spent the first day riding out Hwy 5, up Hwy 41 and along Hwy 27 to Vonda, camping in the town's rustic, but pleasant, campground. We had got off to a late start, having discovered a broken seat bolt on one of the two tandems in the group. After striking out at the Bike Doctor, we found the part we needed at Bike Universe and were out of town by 10:30. July 29 was an extremely hot day, with not a cloud in sight. We had tailwinds blowing us most of the way, so we were in Aberdeen early for lunch. The Co-op grocery store has greatly expanded since our last visit and now includes an in-store bakery (yum!) and deli. Lots of drinks and bottled water to choose from. We found everything we needed for a good lunch and wandered across the street to sit in the shade of some trees while we ate. A couple hours later, we arrived in Vonda. After setting up camp, we wandered over to the hotel to take in some of the local charm. Mainly, we went for the beer. As many prairie cyclotourists have discovered, purchasing a few glasses of draft is often enough to negotiate a hot shower. The hotel restaurant makes excellent meals, but we decided to return to camp for supper. Apparently, there are no trains in Kelowna, so the kids ran waving every time a train passed. Each time, the engineer responded with a loud, long tug on the whistle. After supper, we took a walk through town, watched the sun setting on the local churches, then went to bed shortly after dark. Second Day The following morning, Sunday, we were off to Humboldt. We stopped in Prud'homme for some photographs, passing brilliant blue fields of flax along the way. We had intended to turn north at Hwy 2 to head to Bremen Rd. Instead, we discovered that the service station at the corner of highways 2 and 27 was closed (another washroom stop taken away), and the new owner of the property (who moved here from BC) explained that Bremen Rd was torn up in preparation for being converted to a gravel road. There would be no cycling on that route this trip. We headed south on Hwy 2, then turned east for 3 km of paved road into Dana (site of a former Pinetree Line radar station) and 13 km of gravel (easily enough travelled) to Hwy 670 to Bruno. We had a really good lunch at the Chinese restaurant in town, then continued to Hwy 5, arriving in Humboldt just after five o'clock. The kids were tired from the day's cycling and insisted on pizza for supper. They must have got the idea from the pizza place that opened in the brand new Co-op service station across the street from the campground. Humboldt's Heritage Park campground is a little oasis. It offers pleasant camping and most of the services we needed. The Kelowna folks headed off to find the town's two laundromats, but discovered that both were in extremely bad condition. The following day would be a difficult one, so we turned in early. Third Day Monday, July 31, we were up early, ready for a long day (100 km) from Humboldt to Wadena. At Muenster, we stopped in to look at St. Peter's Cathedral and St. Peter's Monastery. At every town, we stopped in to refill our water bottles and pick up cold juices. This was the third consecutive day of sweltering weather. We'd been cycling under cloudless skies, with high humidity and tail winds every day. At Watson, the group stopped for a photo under the giant Santa Claus (ironic, given the weather), then headed over to the Chinese restaurant for another great lunch. Arriving in Wadena by mid-afternoon, we discovered that the town's campground was missing - completely gone - replaced by a huge hole in the ground. We checked with the town office and were told that they dug everything up to make a new swimming pool. The decision was made on short notice, they said, and they hadn't made plans for proper alternate facilities. They could offer no suggestions on a good place in town to camp and instead urged us to get out of town and head for Fishing Lake (I think they mistook us for "bikers", not "cyclists"). "It's only 10 minutes down the road," they said, even after I tried to explain that we were on bicycles. Another 30 km later, we arrived at Buckhorn Bay Resort, a throwback to the 1920s, crammed with motor homes, RVs and tent trailers. We camped by the garbage cans. At least we were closer to Canora, the next day's destination. Fourth Day We were up very early on August 1, so we could take a good run at another long day. Overnight, the winds turned to blow from the southeast and the sky clouded over. The humidity was even higher than previous days and the sky threatened showers. At Margo, a gaggle of local teenage girls stared at us like we had just landed our saucer from Mars, as we sat in the local cafe sipping juices. At Invermay, I discovered the source of a mysterious squeak on my bike - my pedals were on their last legs. We managed to borrow some tools from the owner of the local hardware store to repair the pedals as best we could and for the remainder of the trip I poured oil into the bearings once or twice a day. More juices from the local grocery store, and off we went. At Rama, we went into town to view the grotto, then stopped in at the hotel for really tremendous denver sandwiches - you can't go wrong ordering denver sandwiches at small town hotels while bicycle touring. I wondered how many of the countless motorists that speed by the town ever stop to visit the grotto, or even express curiosity about it. Like St. Peter's in Muenster, Rama's replica of the famous grotto at Lourds presents a refreshing retreat for weary travellers. At Buchanan, we stopped at Baba's Bakery in the Lucky Dollar store, where the owner had just finished making Ukrainian breads wrapped in beet leaves. I have no idea what the Ukrainian name is for these delicious treats, but my wife says her family has always called them beetniks. We packed a dozen in our panniers, intending to treat the kids to a Ukrainian supper in Canora. We arrived in Canora late in the afternoon, set up camp, then went into town for groceries. Canora is a wonderful little town. It seems that every second person there is a cyclist or cyclist wannabe. It took us forever to get past the front door of the Coop grocery store, as every passer by asked where we were from and where we were going. Several told us how they had recently moved back to the district after living in the Okanagan for several years. One fellow explained how he had emigrated from the UK, where he used to tour and race bicycles, lived in Canora for several years, moved to Kelowna and just moved back to the Canora area. He watched wistfully as we packed our groceries into our panniers, saying that he figured at 60 he was now too old to cycle. That's when we launched into our stories of all the 65 and 70 year-old cyclists we know. After loading our baskets with fruit and snacks for the road, we wandered down Main Street to Denis' Foods, a store renown for it's supply of Ukrainian foods. We picked up some perogies, garlic sausage and a few other things to go with the beetniks. We figured that as long as we were in the heart of Ukrainian country, we might as well sample the best of what the area had to offer. Fifth Day The two consecutive long days had worn us out, so we decided to stay an extra day in Canora. We had planned to take our rest day in Duck Mountain Provincial Park, but we found that the facilities and friendliness of Canora just made it so much better to stop there for a day. So, we spent a day touring the railway museum in the restored CNR station, the Ukrainian museum on Main Street (where the volunteers treated us to coffee and cakes and chatted with us for hours), and the toy and autograph museum (run by another guy who just moved back to Canora from Kamloops - and who coincidentally has in his attic an old Dawes Galaxy touring bike just like the one in my basement). It was a warm, overcast day. Late in the day, we wandered down to the laundromat, a brightly lit, clean facility in stark contrast to the grubby little places in Humboldt. Sixth Day Thursday, August 3, we continued on to Duck Mountain, leaving Canora under low, overcast skies, but with a gentle tail wind. By the time we reached Veregin, the clouds were beginning to break up, but the air was very humid. We toured the Doukhobor museum, hoping to be able to get some of the bread they bake in their outdoor peech, but they had none. After lunch at the Chinese restaurant in downtown Kamsack, we headed for Duck Mountain, arriving at the park entrance just as the last of the clouds blew away and the sun broke through. We found a campsite right on Madge Lake. Seventh Day Friday, August 4, we were looking forward to a short ride (60 km) from Duck Mountain to Roblin. The weather forecast said west winds, but they were blowing nice and hard from the south. The sun was back, but there were a few clouds to provide some relief from the heat. We pressed into the wind and arrived in Roblin by mid-afternoon. Roblin offers free camping to visitors, on the edge of tiny Goose Lake, source of "world class trout fishing". In Roblin, we found our first cappuccino bar since leaving Saskatoon and eagerly pedalled our way back from camp into town for iced coffee. In the early evening, dark clouds rolled over us, sprinkling us with a refreshing shower. The storm gathered strength as it moved across the prairie, so that east of us it unleashed hail bigger than golf balls, pulverizing the towns we intended to visit the next day. Eighth Day The next morning we awoke with broken cloud overhead and the possibility of occasional showers, but we managed to avoid the rain. There were no services between Roblin and Grandview, our halfway point at 48 km. We stopped in at Grandview for lunch, where we learned of the devastation caused by the previous night's storm. We were in town for their homecoming and centennial celebrations, which had been rained out the previous night. We found a nice little take-out joint that made delicious submarine sandwiches and sat in the shade outside for lunch. We arrived in Dauphin by mid-afternoon and set up camp in the city's huge municipal campground. We made a trip into town to find the local bicycle shop, where we discovered that they had on display one of Sekine's radio bikes, a model that was manufactured nearby for a time in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The five-speed bike featured a stick-shift on the top tube (ouch!) and a unit on the front rack that combined a pair of headlamps, orange clearance lamps and mechanical speedometer with an AM/FM radio. The antenna was built into the rack. At one time, this chrome beauty would have been every kid's envy. I recently fournd the Web site of a bicycle collector who has pictures of a similar bicycle. In the evening, the Kelowna folks went to see the entertainment at the Ukrainian festival while the rest of us lounged in camp. Last Day Colleen arrived on Sunday morning so we could take in the Ukrainian festival, while the rest of the group spent the day catching up on laundry and visiting Dauphin. Although this was the end of my trip, the others planned to spend a day or two in Dauphin, then head south to Riding Mountain National Park and work their way to Austin, MB in time for a family reunion the following weekend.

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