Wednesday, August 19- Thursday, August 20, 2009

I left North Battleford late in the day on Wednesday. The weather was horrible. It was not cold, but the wind was howling from the west and I rode Silver directly into it. Not exactly the perfect start to the tour, but I was so ready to leave it could have been snowing and I would have enjoyed it. I stopped to take a break from the wind in Lloydminster and took the opportunity to meet with my friend Hannah (who was also on the houseboat tour during Ryan & Silver’s Excellent Adventure 2007. After a good visit for an hour or so I was back on the road to Edmonton.

This year I added a new upgrade to Silver: a Garmin GPS with a handlebar mount. The GPS is meant to make it easier to find where I’m going because it’s impossible to pull out a map while on the road. It was a big help when I was maneuvering the streets of Edmonton to find my friend’s place where I was staying.  I was tired after four hours of riding into that wind and fell asleep rather quickly, which was good because the next day was an early one.

Up at 7:00, I packed up Silver and headed on the Yellowhead toward Jasper. The ride from Edmonton to Hinton is always filled with so much anticipation. With every kilometre the scenery gets a little more treed, a little hillier, when suddenly in the distance I can see what I’ve been longing for all year: the mountains!

Riding from the flat prairie into the towering Rockies always makes me feel like a kid again.  It’s like entering another world and the long hours it takes to get there suddenly drift out of memory.  Today’s entry was made even more perfect because of the weather- it was a clear, sunny day and the temperature was about 30 degrees.

I stopped when I reached Jasper, checked into the Athabasca Hotel immediately, and then went in search of some lunch. After some Subway (the staple lunch food for my tours) I geared up and headed south to Athabasca Falls…a spectacular place to see a raging mountain waterfall.  I didn’t get the same excitement I did the first time I saw them on the Easy Rider Tour 2006, or even the year before on the Magical Mystery Tour 2008.  I guess some experiences are heightened the first time you do them…the discovery kicks up the excitement.  The Falls will always been a cool sight, but I did get the sense that I was simply going through the motions this time around.

I returned back to Jasper, had a quiet dinner at the Whistle Stop, and went to bed early. Tomorrow would be an early morning because I had a long ride ahead of me and wanted to get a head start.