Bikely map

Finally! Glorious, glorious tailwinds. I got a late start, having overslept, eaten a substantial breakfast, before dealing with problems with my bank card (it turns out that the post-dated paycheque that was deposited effective the 22nd had a 10 day hold on it. I had expected that with a post-dated item, they’d start to clear it early and get it a shorter-than-usual hold, rather than a longer-than-usual hold). Regardless, I was able to hit the road by noon.

The route I’d chosen took me back off the Trans-Canada Highway, onto Highway 48 for a good chunk of the way from Regina to Brandon (Kipling being about halfway), so I had to take a shot as I left the Trans-Canada behind for a nice little chunk of mileage

Highway 48 seemed to have small towns space out on it about every 10-15km, each of which seems to contain at least a small rail terminal, gas station, and convenience store. I took more pictures of one of the grain/fertilizer terminals

I also took another “gee, it sure is flat out here” shot:

And about 2 or 3 times, little rainstorms popped up overhead, and passed about as quickly as they came; basically I had just enough time to toss on my raingear as they built to a peak, and peel it off as they tapered back off. The first held its peak, with hailstones close to about a centimetre in diameter, for maybe half a minute or so, but it was still a hard enough peak that I was glad to have geared up.

Anyhow, the side-effect of these little storms was rainbows:

One of the rainbows was actually intense enough to show a third arch, but the camera failed to pick that up (though it still caught the second). I also took a gratuitous shot of the clouds in the sky, forgetting that some of the interesting contrast I was seeing was because my sunglasses are polarized:

Continuing along, I got to Peebles, up until which, Highway 48 had been a good, well-maintained road, but after which it became littered with sinkholes, only a few of which actually had the pavement collapsed enough to break, but naturally, those are the ones I shot

I also saw an interesting looking pond that must have had some sort of important function (or inordinate risk of flooding, given the way that it was set about with rows of hay bales

Also, as I came in towards Kipling, in spite of being somewhat fatigued, I had the sense to capture a pair of billboards, the likes of which are actually quite common in Saskatchewan.

You see, back in Ontario, there’s this general sort of sense that someone who does their banking at a credit union, and their shopping at a cooperative is probably some sort of activist/hippie/communist/weirdo. Out in the prairies, most towns’ only financial institution is a credit union, the the uncontested prevalent form of retail (not just for groceries, but for gas, hardware, auto parts, agricultural supplies, etc.) is the co-op. Again, if you walk into town and there’s only one gas station, supermarket, agro store, or whathaveyou, it’s probably a co-op. To get a better idea of the scale of the co-op sector in Western Canada, go here.

Anyhow, I pulled into Kipling just before 8pm, having averaged over 20km/h including food/water/photo/bathroom breaks, and set up camp behind a church.