Neudorf to Binscarth

Crooked Lake meandered its way throughout the valley.
The hills through the valley looked as though someone had moulded.
Such beautiful countryside throughout the valley.
These hills looked as though someone had lobbed off the tops of them.
Terri taking a peanut butter sandwich break as we finished the trip through the valley and before turned up the hill to what would be a 2 km climb.
Another province under our belts. Here I am at the Manitoba border.
Postash Pete or Smelly Pete depending on who you talk to. He is from Esterhazy, the home of two potash mines.
The sky at Binscarth before the storm.

The sky after the storm.


How Terri and I felt after we finished the ride.


Being the brave souls we are, Terri and I opted to take the route as it was written on the cue sheet. We wanted to do the scenic route which would be 174 km. It took us through the Qu' Appelle Valley and took 12 hours for the ride including our stops.

The landscape was very different, sculptured hills as you can see from the pictures. There was a very interesting lake known as Crooked Lake. It meandered its way through the valley for several kilometres. There were beautiful cottages all along the lake and we both decided that it would be a great place for a summer home. The downside of the ride was the incredible wind we encountered for the whole morning. It made it difficult to get up any speed and we knew that given distance we had we would be pretty bushed by the time we would get to camp. To end the ride through the valley we had a 2 km climb out. The good news was we had a tail wind for that and the next 20 km and next to no wind the rest of the trip.

The road took us through Esterhazy, the home to two potash mines. The product is mostly shipped overseas to India and China where it is used for fertilizer.

We crossed into Manitoba on this day and this meant a time change which put us into camp about 8pm instead of 7pm. We also had boil water advisory (the second so far) which put an immense strain on the galley crew(the same one that got it the last time) as water had to be boiled for everything including the next days drinking water. The camp store and local gas station had no bottled water for purchase. We also had a very short thunderstorm but fortunately we had our tents up before it hit.