Another weekend, another province

MOOSE JAW, SK -- Well, another weekend, another province, another time zone (even if Saskatchewan is on the same time as Alberta time for the moment).

It seems like ages since I left Fort MacLeod, AB on Thursday morning heading east on AB Hwy. 3. It would be easy to dismiss this relatively flat, relatively straight piece of road that runs across southern Alberta as boring, but you’d be wrong. More like intense, as the westerly winds whipping down from the Crowsnest Pass still hadn’t moderated much as I made the 50-kilometer run into Lethbridge.

I stopped for a coffee within sight of the Lethbridge viaduct and the restored Fort Whoop-Up, an illegal whiskey trading post where unscrupulous Europeans traded gut-rot booze for valuable furs with the natives in the 1860s. It later became an important North West Mounted Police post on the Red Coat Trail dating from the mid-1870s.

I couldn’t believe how tired my arms were from fighting the natural wind and the man-made buffeting from the B-trains, transport trucks pulling two 14-16 meter trailers.

The rigs overtaking the Bike-a-Lounger were bad. Even worse were the oncoming behemoths, especially when two or three of them were travelling in convoy!! It’s like an invisible punch in the stomach, usually coming right after they pass you, but sometimes a few seconds later when you’ve stopped bracing yourself.

Often, it felt as though the bike was out of control, blowing all over the lane, as the BMW’s full fairing acted as a sail in the swirling gusts!

Between the wind, the non-stop truck traffic and the lingering effects of the head cold I picked up in the Rockies, I was exhausted by the time I pulled into Medicine Hat!

Known as the Gas City because of its location on a huge pocket of antural gas, Rudyard Kipling one referred to it having "all hell for a basement!"

I had a quick meal at the Tumbleweed restaurant. I barely remember what it was. Asian pork something or other.

I took a frustrating soak in the Ramada’s not-quite hot tub and spent a few more minutes in the equally disappointing sauna and was asleep before my head hit the pillow. Good thing, as the alarm was set for 4:30. In the morning!

Few, very few, things could get me up at that unholy hour, but dawn in the Cypress Hills is definitely one of them. The hills rise an average of 600 meters above the surrounding prairie rising to a lookout called Head of the Mountain. At more than 1,600 meters, it’s the highest point in Canada between Labrador and the Rockies!

My last time in the hills, my friend Bob, a Saskatchewan native and avid outdoorsman and historian, suggested driving through the hills at dawn to see the spectacular sunrise. That time, I was rewarded with not only a sky that lightened from dark blue to blazing orange as I drove east, but a small herd of pronghorn antelope bounding across the four lanes of the Trans-Canada Highway, leaping in and out of a gauzy layer of ground fog.

No such luck this time, but the dawn was just as beautiful as I headed south on AB 41, rising and falling, sweeping left and right through the hills to the inter-provincial park that straddles the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary. The weather was unseasonably cool and the not-so-far-off clouds looked heavy with rain.

Because of the pending precipitation, I doubled back on 41 to Hwy. 1, the Trans-Canada. After a quick warm-up at the Saskatchewan welcome centre, I was soon in the pretty little town of Maple Creek, SK.

I took a quick drive around the town, which reminded me of my hometown of Cobourg in the 1960s and ‘70s before I left to make my way in the world of newspapers.

I was sipping coffee and munching a delicious apple fritter at Howard’s Bakery and listening to the variety of lively conversations at the busy spot made me think these folks don’t need Facebook. They prefer their interaction face to face. Gardening, casino wins and the Blue Jays seemed to be most popular topics.

I headed south from Maple Creek on The Horseshoe Route, SK Hwys. 21, 13 (another section of the Red Coat Trail) and 37, a rough 200 kilometers of two-lanes torn to shreds by heavy trucks servicing the area’s oil and gas boom.

Not a great ride as I spent more time picking my way past pothole after pothole than enjoying the scenery as the huge cattle ranches of the hills flattened to the seemingly endless fields of wheat on the Canadian plains.

I found myself in the village of Gull Lake just as an ear-splitting air raid siren went off, as it does every day at noon, a holdover from the Cold War. I think I prefer the firing of Nanaimo’s noonday cannon!

I was back on the road after hot soup and a sandwich and headed out into cool, on-again, off-again showers.

By mid-afternoon, I was in Swift Current. This is the Prairie town Mindy‘s parents emigrated to from London in the mid-’50s. Arriving from one of the world‘s great cities, my mother-in-law was aghast when spring arrived and she discovered the roads weren‘t even paved!

My hosts were Linda and Hugh, the sister and brother-in-law of David, a friend in Edmonton. Hugh’s the former director of the local museum. Swift Current, often called Speedy Creek even by locals, is celebrating its centennial this year.

Hugh’s contribution is a series of enlarged archival photos posted around town showing what a particular spot looked like during the town’s early years. He took me to visit the house where Mindy spent her first nine years; her first school (now a community centre) and the site of the then-new hospital that drew her parents to the New World. It’s now just a muddy building lot, a new hospital having recently been built.

I suggested Hugh get in touch with my mother-in-law, Gloria, since she made history as the area’s first female physician. Local women and farm wives who had never been seen by a “lady doctor,” soon made up a good part of her practice. It’s quite likely, if you were born in Speedy during the mid-’50s to mid-’60s, my mother-in-law was the first person you ever saw!

After supper, Hugh and Linda took me to see The Lone Tree. It’s not really the only tree in the region, but it makes a good story to tell visitors. And it does stand out from the surrounding tree-challenged fields.

I should have posted this last night, but fell asleep before it was finished. I’m starting to worry that fatigue is going to be my biggest enemy as I near Winnipeg, the geographic centre of Canada. I must take some downtime there and recharge my batteries. But its yet another province and another time zone east of here.