Vermilion PP (6/5/23 Mon)

Leaving Rouleaux later, and running a few errands make the day seem slower and more relaxed. At the Walmart in Moose Jaw I found a waterproof camera. It uses a microSD card and 2xAAA batteries. I don't plan on adding all those photos here and I will need to use my gpx track to geo locate them. But I wrote code for that years ago, so it shouldn't be too hard to revive.

With the camera I was able to capture some of the wonderful farmland and cloud formations. Like Sunday I threaded through rain cells all day. This time I could take photos to show some of the certain rain that a road turns around, just like a I would have drawn the line if I could.

Remember those commercials with the toll booth reserved for Bob? Thats kind of what having your necessary route avoid all the storm cells feels like. The charmed life.

Near the end of the day I wasn't sure my luck would hold out so I pulled into a gas stop and went to Timmy's for an ice coffee. Turns out this was the last town in Saskatchewan, and upon leaving would enter Alberta. Both the weather app map and sky looked like I would drive of it. The app indicated that this big black cloud cell wasn't dropping rain.

Looking ahead my next gas stop was 2.5 hours, and it was 1900, so too far. Rolling the stop point back found a Provential Park Campground in Vermilion. Always loved that name, so it was an easy choice.

Then I was lucky enough to talk with Anne on the phone. I didn't even forget to wish her a happy birthday. We filled each other in on our activities (neither had read the others blog entries). While on the phone the dry pavement became wet, then dry again. Guess I should have trusted my eyes on the sky over the weather app. Headed for the bike to leave because the sky was still very dark, but found it was still raining, so I went back inside for a few more minutes.

Eventually I just suited up and rode towards Vermilion in light rain, then out of it. Again many cool evening rolling photos of wonderful feilds, ponds, clouds and sun.

Turns out Vermilion is a college town. The park is on the edge of town and I spent a bit too much time checking in and talking with the booth babe. OK she was a nice older lady and we did talk for awhile. I saw something in the field, that she said was gophers. Too many gophers, but less than last year. She picked my campsite, which was a great location in a very empty park.

The campsite are nicely separated and #91 is on the outer edge, but close to a bathroom. In the empty park you can walk through a half dozen sites and get to the showers quicker than walking the roads. After setting up my tent I headed for that shower only to find it required $2 coins (toonies) for 5 minutes. I had none, and the only person I saw walking back didn't have them either. While I was suiting up the guy stopped by saying he found one coin, but I figured I wanted 2 and was already comitted to heading for town. So I rode back into town bought water and got change for the shower. The shower had no temperature control and got way too hot. But I only used 5 minutes. When collecting my items I laughed when I found a toonie in the mechanism. Then I looked closeer and realized the catch box was gone and that was the toonie I dropped in.

Sleeping weather was wonderfully cool with a mild breeze. I head Coyotes yipping a few site away before I crawled into the tent. In the morning I think I heard a bear in the grass lined roadway behind my site. In the morning the breeze kept down the bugs so I could make coffee and type this. When scouting my site for the best tent location I found 4 gopher holes, one was a lot larger. This morning I realized the larger hole was probably a Coyote trying to dig out the gopher.

On todays agenda we have Edmonton and the Geographic Center of Alberta. It felt really good to sleep longer and have a relaxing morning. It's time to slow down a bit.