Day 22 - Swift Current to Chaplin (T.D.: 94km; S.T.: 4h37min)

Woke up, mostly dry, beside a very well-watered lawn. Our sleep had been just restful enough, what with the sprinkler system, the It's-Saturday-night-in-Swift-Current! crowd of revelers that appears to haunt Sandy's neighbourhood, and the few well-timed train whistle blasts that pierced through our disembowled-prairie-deer nightmares to punctuate an otherwise good night's sleep. We had a romantic homeless-couple picnic breakfast in Wood Buffalo Park down the street, and filled up our water bottles at the Subway restaurant near the highway (what a life we lead!) before getting the day's ride underway.

Today was notable for a few reasons. One was the amount of hills we had to climb up. This part of Saskatchewan is by no means flat, and one hill had us inching our way along for over 6 kilometres. At the top of this hill, though, we found a lovely tree that gave us some lovely shade in which to enjoy a lovely breeze and a lovely snack. We really liked that tree (trees are hard to come by in this part of the world!).

A second notable feature of the day was the high concentration of ghost towns we discovered along this stretch of road. Perhaps the shops and service stations were closed because it was a Sunday, but one got the feeling in Herbert, Morse, and Chaplin, that the shops and service stations in these places are just never open. The forsaken grain elevators casting lonely shadows over abandoned bowling alleys reminded us of an incredible art exhibit called “Woodrow” that we’ve been privileged to see a couple of times, once at the Halifax art gallery and once at the Rooms in St. John’s. Here’s a website about it: http://www.graemepatterson.com/WoodrowMapFrameSet.htm .

The last of these towns. Chaplin, was our destination for the day, and as we neared it, in the blazing July sun, we were shocked to see snow and ice covering the fields beside the highway. Could it be true? Was this just a sun-stroke induced mirage, or had the world gone topsy-turvy, firing off snowstorms in the middle of heatwave?

Nope, nope, and nope. It was salt! Horrible salt! The sort of salt that is carried by the wind until it coats your body and tent, making you and your possessions alarmlingly flavorful. The good news is that Chaplin has a swimming pool (and rather incredibly, the swimming pool was full and operational!), so we enjoyed a good swim that washed off some of our seasoning before we hit the hay (the campground was an old hayfield). We were the only ones in the whole field. Good old Chaplin. It was a strange town.

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 20.4km/h

Mx. Spd.: 47.1km/h

Worst place to go when you need to use the bathroom: Morse! Nothing was open! Actually, one place was open – thank God.

Worst place to have a snowball fight: Chaplin! It's not really snow! It's salt!

Best place to have a salt fight: Chaplin

Most amazing dinner feat: Finishing the two piece farmer's sausage meal at the Chaplin hotel. Who knew a farmer's sausage could be so big?

Stat most likely to be misconstrued distastefully: That last one. I just realized it now. But I'm serious – it was a really big meal! It came with onion rings! Each sausage was the size of a very large banana, peel on. The waitress had made some hand gestures to give me an indication of the size, but she was way off. It was double what she’d indicated. Caroline had fish and chips (I know, Alex...never eat fish when you’re 2000 km from an ocean – but sometimes there isn’t much to choose from on these menus. Hence the farmer’s sausage debacle.)