Home!!

We made it home on Friday (11th July) at 9:30am. We took the bus from Fort Saskatchewan at 11:15am Thursday. It was quite the trip... But we (and the bikes) survived. We had to box up the bikes for Greyhound. It wasn't that bad, except that I lost some bearings from mine when we removed the stem. (Better than loosing my marbles, I think.) It's all good. We'll get some new ones tomorrow.

Barely home for 4 days and I've already done two runs, a swim at the lake, a bike ride, and a spin class. My whole week is already booked up with appointments, runs, rides, swims, the Giro, and other things. Nothing like getting right back into the swing of things. Good thing I'm not working, eh... ;)

PS. The pictures of the canoe are coming. I tried to upload them tonight, but there were some problems.

Canoe

I'm finally slightly organized with my pictures... Here's the canoe that Dan & Rick are building. It's pretty nice!

Here's where they were at when we arrived. The canoe is upside-down.
This is where they got to. I included the picture with the untrimmed strips (left picture) because it was clearer - the pic with the trimmed strips is a bit dark.




















Here's Joe helping out.

Almost home

We'll be heading back to Burnaby on Thursday. It's gonna be tough to rejoin the "real world" when we get back. Life on the road is so uncomplicated and fun!

We went to Elk Island National Park yesterday. Didn't see any elk, but we saw 5 of the approximately 425 Plains Bison that they have there.

We did a short ride today. Went to a town called Lamont for lunch. It's about 30km east of Fort Saskatchewan. Great ride there - fast and a wee bit down hill. Coming back rather sucked! Head wind and the opposite of that slight down hill we'd had going there... Took us about 45 minutes longer to get back than it did to get there. It's a nice ride though - lots of fields of canola. Very beautiful. (Oops, I should've taken a picture!) It doesn't replace mountains and the ocean for me, but it's great to cycle alongside and watch the wind move through the fields.

One of the reasons we've spent so much time here is that Dan & Rick are building a canoe. They'd started this when Rick lived in Coquitlam. When he moved to Alberta, he took the canoe since he was buying a house with a garage. (Not quite enough space in our condo for a canoe - even if it is only half finished...) Any way, they've been working hard on it. I'll take a picture of it and post it so you can see how great it looks!

One Year

I just realized that it's been a year since I first posted on this blog (http://terrisyear.blogspot.com/2007/06/first-weekend.html). Does that mean that my year off is over? Nope! Not yet. I'm still off and I'll keep adding to the blog in case anyone is still following my life of leisure. ;)

From Joe...

Happy Canada Day!!!

Joe

Joe wanted me to share a bit of his trip with you. He's been having a great time on the front of my bike. Except for the rainy days - he really didn't enjoy those. Unfortunately, I never got him a rain poncho, so he got quite wet sometimes. We're having some nice hot weather in Fort Sask, so he's been working on his tan.

Joe taking a nap in my bike bag.

Joe having a well deserved beer (or two) after a hard day's ride.

Here's Joe at the continental divide between Alberta and BC. He's enjoying his celebratory Mars bar.Joe thought Moraine Lake (pictured on the old $20 bill) was quite beautiful!

Here's Joe with his buddy Donkey who rides on Dan's bike.Joe was quite excited to find a place that was just his size. Unfortunately, we didn't spend the night here, just stopped in for lunch at Pocahontas (Poco's Cafe), between Jasper and Hinton.

There are quite a few other Joe pictures, but he'll save those for later.

Fort Saskatchewan

We made it! 2000+ km across BC and into Alberta in about 26 days! We arrived in Fort Saskatchewan on Thursday (26 June), but I've been a bit lazy about updating the blog. Fort Sask is north-east of Edmonton. Dan's friend Rick lives here, so we're bunking with him for a couple of weeks.

Here's what's been happening since the last post. We had a couple of wonderful days in Jasper. Love the little town! Dan and I found a great bakery - The Bear's Paw - and we hung out there eating yummy things and drinking great coffee on the bench outside of the shop. Met a lot of people while we sat there.

We've had our fastest rides since leaving Jasper. Apparently, there is always a tail wind if you're riding east along Hwy 16. And it's flat! We spent a night in Hinton. Not much happening there on a Sunday night... The next night was in Edson. Tuesday we separated from the rest of the group at Evansburg. It was a bit sad to say goodbye to them. The group of 5 will be continuing on to Newfoundland (http://2008canadacycletrip.blogspot.com/). Dan and I stayed in the Pembina Provincial campsite - pretty nice place. It's near Entwistle. We got our tent set up just before a big thunder storm. We grabbed all of our food and headed for the day use area to hide out in the picnic shelter. After an hour or so, it cleared up and you'd never know that there had been a storm. The next day we got off the 16 and headed north on smaller roads. We spent a night in a small place called Gunn. Same thing happened there with the weather. We watched a thunder storm come in over the lake. This time, we hid out in the restaurant until it passed.

We weren't as lucky the following day - the thunder storm hit while we were riding. We were on Hwy 37 - a rather small road with very little in the way of shoulders. The wind was coming from the side and there were lots of big trucks travelling. We had some scary moments. Dan found an abandoned shed for us to hide out in until the rain stopped.

Unfortunately, the wind continued. I'd say that that was our hardest ride of the trip because of the narrowness of the road. We made it into Fort Saskatchewan in one piece though!

We're enjoying hot showers, soft beds, and good food at Rick's place.