A Pleasant Ride, at Last!

---

A Pleasant Ride, at Last!

Sunday, 29 July 2007

Today was another moving day. As it was way too far to cycle from Winnipeg to our next destination, in Whiteshell Provincial Park, we all started out together in Casper, and Bob was to drop me off near a small (should I say “tiny”??) town called Anola. I’ve pretty much decided that there’s no way I can fit in all the possible stops in Manitoba, let alone Ontario, so we were now heading to the eastern end of the province, to a lakeside cabin resort in the park. We’re just hoping it will impress us a bit more favourably than did the condo at Duck Mountain Provincial Park in Saskatchewan.

Now, because we’ll be staying in a “light housekeeping” cottage, and because in this case there are no restaurants close by, we had to get groceries & whatever before we got there. Enter Bob the shopper, as yours truly had some cycling to do. Unfortunately the grocery stores in Winnipeg (or perhaps all of Manitoba) don’t open till noon on Sundays, so he had to go to a store in a much smaller town, called Beausejour. As I found out later, their selection of foods was quite limited - anything that was “desirable” to us was already sold out to other folks on summer holidays! But he did manage to get enough (MORE than enough) to see us through.

Meanwhile I had one of my most pleasant rides in Manitoba. The pavement was in good condition, traffic was light, the breezes were light & helping me, on the whole, and Blue & I pretty well just cruised along. The heat was still pretty intense, and the shoulders were again very very soft - at one point it was difficult to find a place where it was firm enough to support the bike on its kickstand. But I was pretty well surrounded by farms & forest, again, very pleasant.

And I was able to get to our meeting place before Bob, which has been pretty unusual during this trip. And that after climbing a long (2-3 kilometres) but gradual hill in a fairly high gear - I almost felt like going down & trying it again! The only “problem” was that the route was not as long as I’d anticipated, so again I was a bit short of 60 kilometres.

As far as our accommodations are concerned, they are nice, and Bob did a good job cooking up some hamburgers for our first dinner there. It almost feels like home, just a bit smaller (ok, a LOT smaller), with the lake just in front of us & a small area for dogs, Canine Cove, also just in front of the cottage. No phones or wifi, but we do have satellite TV & an air-conditioner in the living room. There’s even an outdoor jacuzzi, but, really, they don’t tempt me a lot, in general. We plan a day off tomorrow, so I’m hoping we’ll enjoy it.

DAY 34: 58.2 km, in 2:56 hours, ave. speed 19.8 km/hr, max. speed 25.3 km/hr

---