Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Caught in Carberry

After a nice stay in the Mennies' winnebago, we were treated to a fantastic breakfast: eggs, bacon, toast, and some fantastic hashbrowns. Barb even did some of our laundry for us, so that we had clean clothes to go on the road with. Lloyd drove us out along the gravel road from their place, and took lots of pictures as we got ready to go. It was amazing to see how happy THEY were to take US in for the night. We have been incredibly fortunate to have so many incredible people take us in. They don't even know us, but they treat us like family. We are five very lucky guys!

Lloyd had called the Brandon tv station, and as he drove to work, he stopped to let us know. They met us just as we went out of town. We didn't see it, but apparently we made the newscast! Pretty good considering the Federal Government was apologizing today for the scandal over residential schools, likely taking up quite a bit of airtime across the country.

Once we got outside, we knew today was going to be terrible. The wind was blowing due East in our faces, and it was chilly. A quick check of the weather online showed the winds were blowing at 40km/hr, with gusts up to 55km/hr. We were travelling at an average just over 12km/hr into it, over flat terrain no less, by far our lowest average day of the trip. It was tiring and demoralizing, and just seemed to get worse over the course of the day.

It got bad enough that we had to get off of the Transcanada onto the smaller highway 351 because we weren't sure what we were going to get to, and we needed food for dinner. We got a bit more shelter from the wind, but not much in the end, and the road was worse. We made it to Carberry, about 60km outside of Brandon. The closest campsite was another 20+km back on the Transcanada, and in an effort to make it to Winnipeg tomorrow, we were willing to do it after some dinner at a restaurant.

Well, unfortunately for us, it only got worse. It started to rain, got colder, and the wind was still blowing strong in the wrong direction. None of us wanted to bike to the campsite. We would have gotten soaking wet, we would have been miserable, we would have gotten in late to the campsite, and would have had to set up our tents in the pouring rain. We have now gotten a hotel for the night. There's nothing we can do about the weather, and we have to remind ourselves that this is a bad stretch. We've gotten some of the worst weather the Prairies have seen in a number of years.

Tomorrow we'll get up early and see if we get lucky. We'll try and make it to Winnipeg, but otherwise will go as far as possible. The weather's supposed to clear up later in the week, with better winds, so hopefully we can make up some ground then.

Until then, we'll just have to tough out this bad stretch, and wait for it to end.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. The Prairies are really making it tough.

Lâchez pas.

M

Anonymous said...

Hi boys - even the law of average is going against you! It has to, and will get better. xxxxx's

Anonymous said...

Hi guys! I start every day reading your blog and I enjoy it so much. I can't believe the weather you are enduring - tough go for sure. Try not to get too discouraged. Take care.

Anonymous said...

I forgot to sign my comment above!
Beth McMillan