Valemount to Nordegg

Well, where to begin! The day started out very well, but by about 4:00 p.m. things were looking bleak.

I started with a hearty breakfast at Abernathy's Restaurant a few kilometers out of Valemount. The restaurant is not much to look at. In fact, I thought the business had closed down as there wasn't much activity, but the coffee was good, and the breakfast was substantial. And it would be the only real meal I had the entire day.

In just over 100 km, I was in Jasper and sitting in the Snowdome Coffee Bar with a really excellent latte and a muffin. It turns out the Snowdome is also a giant laundromat and coin-operated shower facility.

From Jasper, I took Highway 93 South. The scenery along this road was absolutely stunning. Although the whole area was shrouded in forest fire smoke, I still stopped many times to take pictures. At Saskatchewan River Crossing, I turned east on Highway 11 to Nordegg. There are also many stunning vistas on this highway, and again, I stopped many times to take pictures.

As I traveled east, I noticed that the view ahead was hard to make out. I thought this was due to all the smoke, but as it turned out, it was a massive thunderstorm into which I was rushing headlong! A predicted 60% chance of a thunderstorm had now become 100% certain. All my picture-taking delayed my arrival in Nordegg, and when I still had about 20 kilometers to go, the thunderstorm and I collided. It was dark, windy and wet with lightning streaking down exactly where I was headed. When the hail started, I pulled off the road and sat on my bike till that stopped.

I carried on and thanked the universe when a gas station appeared. I hunkered down in the store with the two Chinese ladies who worked there. After about 30 minutes, the rain eased up a bit, so I carried on to Nordegg.

My plan had been to camp at Upper Shunda Campground just outside Nordegg, but I ditched that plan and started looking for accommodations. Nordegg is a small place, and unfortunately, nothing was available.

I had no choice but to go to the campground. I stopped at the check-in office, but no one was around. The rain had eased up, but the wind was howling. I was worried that more rain was on the way, so I wanted to get everything set up quickly. Eventually, Linda arrived and put me in a spot close to the office. In the kerfuffle of arriving in the wind and rain, I lost my prescription glasses. It would have been a huge problem to lose them, but eventually, I found them lying in the gravel.

I fumbled around, struggling to position my motorcycle and to get my tarp and tent set up only to discover that I was two feet from a massive ant hill. They were those huge red and black ants that can take a big chunk out of you. No way was I crawling in and out of my tent with those dudes so close. I had no choice but to reposition everything - bike, tent, tarp. That all took another hour or so, and by the time I got my habitat prepared, the rain and wind had disappeared. After all that struggle, there was no way I was unwrapping my bike to go get supper. I purchased a bag of nacho chips and some bottled water at the camp office, and that was supper.

The last straw I discovered was the f#&king mosquitos. Living on Salt Spring Island for the last three years, where we're mostly mosquito-free, I had forgotten how relentless they can be. They made my already meager supper miserable. I gave up sitting and went for a walk around camp and then gave up completely and crawled into my tent at 8:30 p.m.Read more