We had a nice start from the comfort of our hotel room this morning. It was hard to leave but we made it out the door around 10 am. We had carefully planned our exit from Winnipeg, trying to make it less exciting than biking into Winnipeg. I had downloaded the bike routes for Winnipeg and put them into the GPS. However, the maps for “Downtown” and “West” Winnipeg did not line up. It seems that no one would want to bike from downtown to west Winnipeg. Hopefully, the city will realize this and work to correct it someday.
Our ride out was down nice quiet residential streets until we got to just before the turn off to 221. Then, in typical Manitoba highway style, the shoulder disappeared and there was some very exciting riding while poping on and off the road for any vehicle meeting oncoming traffic. Thankfully, most of the traffic was headed to the perimeter highway, so things eased off once we passed it.
We stopped at the municipal office in Rosser for a quick bathroom and snack break. After that we continued on to Marquette for the lunch. It was sunny and the terrain was gorgeous. When we got to Marquette, the general store was closed and there was a tiny cafe open. We decided to head inside for a cold drink as we were quite warm at this point. Inside we found more Manitoba hospitality. The lady that ran the cafe said we could eat our own food inside to get out of the wind. Then we had a good look at the menu and Adam decided to order food. We had a huge amount of food for less than $10! The folks were super nice and chatted to us. The owner told us about her exercise program and the two older gentlemen were telling us about theirs. Then the one of the gentlemen started telling us about working on the rail crews and how they used to keep going all day in the heat and about being on wagon trains in his youth. What a nice place to stop!
After Marquette, we headed to Portage La Prairie through more back country roads. We had a headwind but it was nice country and sunny! We got a neat picture of a well preserved old church.
We pulled into Portage and stopped at the visitors centre and got directions to the grocery store and the campground in town. One thing that we love about the prairies is that each small town has a campground. It is so nice to pull in at the end of a day of biking and have the grocery store and campground in close proximity instead of having to plan for half the day to make sure you have food when you get into town. Here you had to call Doug who comes along and collects the money. He charges cyclist half price and we had a good chat. The only other campers brought over some barbecued potatoes and some cucumbers and tomatoes from their garden. They were very good! I made beef and spinach on rice and we called it a night!
Trip Around The World 
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