Day 9 - July 31, 2013

Day Nine.  All is well.  Still headed north.

Today was a relatively short ride (250 miles), from North Battleford, Saskatchewan to Edmonton, Alberta.

I made stops along my route today.  My most interesting stop was at Lashburn, Saskatchewan, pop. 967. This is where I met Mr. Larry Walker, a gentleman who said he had lived all of his 65 years within 20 miles of Lashburn, and most of that time he was a farmer.  Mr. Walker invited me to have coffee with him at the local cafe.  It was the only one in town.  I am glad I did.  He told me that there is no place on earth that he would rather be than where he is.  He said that when the thermometer dips to 40 below it is not a deterrent to life. Did you know that 40 below on the Fahrenheit scale and 40 below on the Celsius scale represent the same temperature?  Me either.  Mr. Walker did.

There are oil wells on Mr. Walker's property.  But in Canada (mostly from what I read tonight) mineral rights belong to "The Crown".  Canada, like Australia, is a federation, and loosely interrupted "The Crown" is the government.  It is too involved for this blog, but it produced some interesting reading tonight.....

The whole of the above is that it was a good day.  In a great part because of my opportunity to meet and spend time with Mr. Walker.

I traveled the Trans Canadian Highway from North Battleford to Edmonton.  It remained a divided four lane road, and it was very smooth.  My day started at 6:00 MDT, and it was 49 degrees.  It warmed to low 70's along my route of travel, with not rain.

As I progress north the prairies are giving way to small rolling hills.  Imagine a time when the prairies were often dark with Buffalo.  Lewis and Clark wrote in their journals of a time they waited over two hours for a great buffalo heard to cross a river in front of them. That was another prairie, but not unlike the Saskatchewan prairie.

Gone is the prairie grass and the buffalo, but the landscape is much like it was just over a hundred years ago when the CN built a new rail line (1905), that produced new settlements, that made it possible for farmers to move here.  It is a big land.

Another good day.