Day 25 – Regina to Indian Head via Qu’Appelle Valley (T.D.: 131km; S.T.: 7h22min)

Yikes, that last entry was not as stimulating as it could have been. It was late. We were tired (Caroline had to finish it off for me). It does a disservice to our wonderful hosts in Regina, Okie and Gisella (I hope you got at least some sense of how wonderful they were). We had a great time with them, eating and talking about travelling adventures. This continued over a delicious breakfast on Day 25 and we were sad to say goodbye to these newfound friends.
From Okie and Gisella’s, we took a cut-off/bypass highway out of Regina, and it was 30 kilometres before we met up with the TransCanada again. Here, we stopped to consider our options. Part of the reason why we had been up late the night before is that we were taking a second look at our planned route, which was to travel northeast through the Qu’Appelle Valley, make a pilgrimage to Melville (for reasons I’ll explain in due course), and then take Highway 16 (the Yellowhead) down through Manitoba to Winnipeg. We had chosen this route over the TCH because Manitoba is infamous for having terrible highway shoulders, including on the TransCanada – and a number of cyclists have been killed because of it. The Yellowhead would be a relatively quieter highway in comparison, so “white-lining it” (that’s what you call it when you have to ride on the white line ‘cause there’s no shoulder) would be proportionately less nerve-racking for us. After a bit more research at Okie and Gisella’s, however, we determined that neither route was ideal, and that we may have to improvise our way through on secondary highways, popping onto the major arteries for as long as we could stand it, and then ducking out when there was a suitable alternative.

As we sat in the shade of a Shell service station, we pondered these options and decided to send a text message to Dan and Ally. Remember them? They’re the father and daughter cyclist pair who we met back somewhere around Roger’s Pass. They, to the best of our knowledge, had not detoured through Drumheller, or taken an extravagant double rest day in Medicine Hat, and were therefore likely to be a few days ahead of us, and already well into Manitoba. We heard back very promptly. Turns out they were in Brandon, MB, and had stayed on the #1 the whole way. It also turns out that Manitoba has finally decided to get on the ball and pave the TransCanada’s shoulders (this is a brand-new thing for Manitoba – as recent as last summer, the TCH’s shoulders remained unpaved). Problem solved. We would take the TCH. Thank you, magic of texting.

This left us with the decision of whether or not to detour through the Qu’Appelle Valley – a region of Saskatchewan that’s renowned for it’s beauty and atypical (for Saskatchewan) landscape – and continue with our planned pilgrimage to Melville. We decided to go with the former, but lopped off the latter from our itinerary. The Melville pilgrimage was a silly sort of thing anyway. There is a small (some would say insignficant) connection with the town and my favourite Canadian band, the Rheostatics, and I had been pleased to find that it was not too far out of the way on our original route. With the change in plans, however, it would be too much for too little, so as compensation, I pulled out my iPod and listened to their album Melville as we headed up highway 10 towards the Qu’Appelle river. The river valley is certainly beautiful, and certainly atypical of the Saskatchewan landscape norm. It’s sort of a more lush version of the Red Deer river valley in Alberta, and was a nice escape from the endless farmland we’d been touring through for several days now. The detour meant an extra 60 kilometres, but was well worth it to get off the main highway and see a bit more of the province. Caroline had a dipped cone and I a giant cinnamon roll in Fort Qu’Appelle, which made the side trip even more worthwhile. It was late by the time we got back to the TCH, and we were ready for a big meal (courtesy of Esso) and a good sleep (courtesy of the Indian Head KOA Campground).

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 17.7km/h (Rough shoulders and lots of rolling hills leading up to and along the river valley slowed us down. Also a bit of a headwind as we headed south towards Indian Head. Them’s my excuses)
Mx. Spd.: 43.5km/h

Strangest insect: A weird sort of amber-coloured dragonfly that was a common sight through the Valley. It looked like a sliver of dark glass, like a beer bottle shard, only with wings.)

Best guess as to how long it takes to cycle through Ontario: A young guy at the campground. He ventured (quite overwhelmed, even, by the possibility) that it would take “4 or 5 days”. Having looked into it ourselves, we estimate it will take about 29 or 30.

Most unfortunate town name etymology: Indian Head’s – apparently this, the highest point of land in the region, was where many of the Assiniboine people who lived there went to die during an outbreak of smallpox caused by the arrival of European fur-traders sometime in the 1800s (it was customary, I guess, to travel to the highest point of land when it was your time to go).

Biggest disappointment (besides the exclusion of Melville from the itinerary): Not seeing the giant “Indian head” that is a town landmark. (We couldn’t find it. Can’t be that giant.)