Alberta

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One of the first things we saw when we came into Alberta was a sign on a gas station store that read “Need chaps??” - yes, this is what Alberta was all about; big trucks, beef and cowboys! We spent our first night in Medicine Hat where we were to meet my wonderful friend Erin, who was flying out to see us. We stayed with her cousin in Medicine Hat and had a great few days of girl talk, lake-ing (Brad gave me a bleeding nose during keep-away) and doing the put-put. We had great dinners all our nights there and many drinks…it was a great visit!



We headed out of Medicine Hat in the evening so we had only planned on doing an easy 60km before camping for the night. We got caught in a storm of giant raindrops and got soaked, but it only lasted less than an hour so we cruised on. It was when lightening caught our eye that we stopped on our bikes and looked all around to find that we were surrounded by storms all behind us. By this time in the trip the storms didn’t worry us, so we got out the camera and started taking videos and pictures of the distant rain and lightening. We rolled on until a truck pulled over at the side of the road. Apparently a local resident of the area saw us with our camera and thought we were CRAZY to be out in the weather so carefree and sent her husband to rescue us because the storms were coming our way. They took us to their farm and we watched it pour with rain out the window of the shop the family let us stay in. We were later told that the area where we were picked up from had had golf ball-sized hail during the storm. We were glad we had been rescued! We were especially glad to be rescued by the Guchters the next day when they made us a deluxe bacon and egg breakfast before driving us out to the same spot they picked us up from so we didn’t cheat our distance. What great people!!!



After our stay in Medicine Hat and with the Guchters we were back to staying on the side of the road and in parks through the rest of Alberta. One memorable night was spent on a high school field in Lethbridge where the sprinklers soaked our tent at 4:30 in the morning. It wasn’t the wetness that was so bad because we had all of our stuff covered, but the sound was the worst!! It wasn’t a light sprinkle but a jet of water so every time it hit our tent it was so loud it sounded like the end of the world.



Our last two days in Alberta were some of the slowest days of our trip. All along we had felt invincible from the wind! There had been wind through the prairies but it wasn’t debilitating like everyone had warned us it would be. But our last few days, the wind let itself be known!!! We spent 5 hours in the middle of the afternoon behind a hay bale one day waiting for the wind to die down because it was so bad. The days were so difficult, we rode at 14kms an hour, but we had our home province ahead of us so we got through them. The most exciting and scary part was saying goodbye to the prairies and heading into the mountains, we took the #3 hy and needed to climb the Crowsnest Pass. It was so neat to be back in familiar territory! Even if between us and home were killer mountains we were going to get there!! We saw the Frank Slide before ending our trek through Alberta at the Visitor Information Center were we made ourselves at home, only 5kms from the BC border!

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Photos

Crowsnest Pass
A welcome tree