Geographic Center of Alberta (6/6/23 Tues)

Cooler temps and a breeze made sleeping and in campsite coffee much nicer. I slept in later, and decided coffee and drying out of the tent ground cloth was worth the short time. A local guy walking his dog stopped by to talk bikes. He has a KLR650, and wants to do D2D (on his ST1300), He told me that the new road to Tuk makes it the furthest north you can ride in Canada. And that the gravel road is good unless it gets rained on. I typed inand published yesterdays blog post before finally packing up and hitting the road at 1020 with a temps still 17C.

Uneventful ride with blue skys and light traffic upto Edmonton. Or at least the edge of it. I took a beltway around the city. The houses built upto the beltway packed in just an armspan apart. I don't think I'll ever understand why people want to life that close to each other. I captured a few images of it with the other camera, as well as more contryside shots.

Sometimes I can ride the full tank of gas, and my first stop was one of those. I would have just refueled and used the restroom, but they had a Timmy's. So coffee #2 and some website updating of photos and the start of todays blog.

Normal highway travel to the following gas stop. Had Shawarma for lunch, attempting to be more health, but the combo came with a lot of fries. So that didn't go as planned. Had a text chat with a friend and headed off to the Geographic center of Alberta.

So my first hint was that the route on the map went way off the road and had many stretches of dirt, some as long as 33km. Second sign was there was no signs. The HD rider that suggested this said it was obvious, and this was the opposite. Third came the nice lady in the seurity SUV that lit up her lights as I rounded a corner.

As I slowed her lights went out, but I rode up to the car to be as polite as possible. We talked through her open passenger window, and I had a helmet and earlyplugs. She metioned something about 88 and held up a radar gun. That was much better than the speed I suspeted I was going. On my way out I checked the prior speed limit and it was 100km/h, so I was likely doing 110km/h. I took off my helmet to hear better and she said the limit was actually only 50km/h. Once that sunk in I was very suprised and said that's really slow? She aggreed, that it had something to do with some work on the bridge and corner. And there was another 50 zone by the power plant ahead. Otherwise the rest of the road was 80. I thanked her and asked about my target location, and if any of the roads are restricted. She had no idea about my center quest, but said the roads are open.

I went slow by the power plant, but a pickup coming out waited for me to go ahead of him. Then I continued along the dirt road with a truck on my tail. It was posted 80km/h so that's what I tried to do. Every once in awhile the road would have something horible in it, like deep gravel ruts or rocks. After 10km or so I pulled off and let him gladdly pass me. I stayed with him awhile, but steep hills and rocky roads slowed me to a better pace. I continued down the maze of roads, glad that I had 3 tracking devices to get out. Each road got deeper into the back country and had worst bad sections. Clearly rain would make this unridable, and some sections still had large puddles and ruts upto 10 inches, but had at least a section of the road clear.

If that didn't deter me then seeing a young bull moose in the small dirt road gave me pause. He was just as confused and hurried off the road and disapeared immediately. I fumbled for the phone but he was gone. I then set a gps waypoint so I would know when to watch for him on my way back. It took me a few hundred yards of bad road to type in "moose" for the waypoint. Stopping to handle road obsticles as needed. I then hit the save button on the gps. At nearly the same time I misjudged a rut. Instead of being a ridge lesss than an inch, is was a raised center with a 6in lower rut. Crossing to the otherside of that edge was achieved by my body and the bike, but not the tires. Down I went. I felt a bit sore, but fine. The bike looked ok. I lifted it back upright and gave it a once over. Mirrors spun, but fine. Scuffs on left plastics. And a dangling but functional front left turn signal. I later found the bars are no longer straight, probably the riser bolts all need to be loosened and realigned. Not too bad, but now I'm only a dozen kilometers from this point and really want that picture.

So as beautiful as the ride was it ended at a gate that was just past the right turn that didn't exist. It seems the actual center is about 500m into the woods. It was dense woods and I was in no mood for that at 1900. I took pictures of that location, and as far as I'm concerned being under 1km counts.

After that I went to the closest gas station, taped up my signal, and found a campground 45 minutes ahead.

It is almost empty and honor system run. You pick your site and put $30 into a drop box. Just an outhouse and no water.

I'm all setup and wrote this before going to bed. Mainly because it's almost dusk at 2200. I suspect in the next few minutes I'll be sleeping and it will get darker. Goodnight sun.