Day 80 – Besant to Morse

We had a cold start to the day but the sun is out and things have warmed up nicely. We are stopped for lunch in Chaplin at a cafe and will continue on to either Herbert or Morse this evening. The wind is much calmer than yesterday and we are flying down the road in comparison.

The terrain here is really neat. Almost all the trees have disappeared, replaced by rolling grasslands.

Update from Adam:

After Mortlach, to our disappointment, the 10ft shoulder narrowed to a 3ft shoulder. It was still much better than roads we had been on before, especially with the light traffic. However, we thought we were only going to get wider shoulders from here until BC! Luckily it only lasted 15km or so until the shoulder widened again.

After our lunch stop at the local diner, we went to the shore bird interpretive centre. Unfortunately the centre was closed at the end of August! You would think there would be enough tourists for the Labour Day weekend. There was a look out of Chaplin Lake. We heard that Chaplin Lake is saltier than the Dead Sea!

We initially had a slight tail wind, which became a cross wind as we neared Morse. We decided to stay the night at Morse as Swift Current was now only a 60km ride away. At Morse we went to the local grocery store and grabbed provisions for dinner. Before entering the store, we noticed a local park his car in the middle of the road to enter the store! He wasn’t the only one as later on we witnessed two other people do the same. Only in a small town can you just park your car in the middle of the road downtown. 😉

After the grocery store, we went to the local tourist information/museum which was housed in an old school building from 1912. It was attached to a more modern school, but the school was boarded up. It was unfortunate as the school appeared to still be in good shape. At the tourist office, we chatted to the girl who worked there. She happened to have lived just outside Tokyo for a couple years, and we had a nice chat about Japan.

After the tourist office, we headed to the town’s campground which was beside the train tracks (of course!). We were pretty much the only ones there until a small family stopped by with an RV later in the evening.

The trains ran all night but having been camping in the prairies over the last few weeks we have gotten used to it. We were especially close to the tracks however, and even with ear plugs the trains were very loud!! We would probably not stop at a campground so close to the tracks again (the bathrooms were very nice and clean though, although there was only enough hot water for one person to shower..).

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