It was a cool start to the day. Luckily it wasn’t raining as was forecasted. We made breakfast (fried oatmeal) by the main building and once it was cooked ate the breakfast inside the shelter. We checked the weather forecast and we had somehow missed the big rain storm which was now hitting east of us. It was now going to be a sunny day!
Once we were back on the road, we noticed that we had a slight headwind. As we continued along the highway the clouds disappeared and the sun came out. It was a delight. After a few hours, as we got closer to the Alberta border, the scenery became very spectacular with rolling hills. Unfortunately the wind had really picked up by this point and we had some strong headwind gusts. The traffic was also very very busy on the highway since it was the end of the labour day weekend. I don’t think we had seen so many RVs in one day. Basically when it comes to camping these days, tenting is a rarity.
I got a great shot of a very long CP Rail train. It was really neat to see the entire length of the train in the vast open landscape.
We finally managed to arrive at the Alberta border sign. Since I was busy taking pictures Katherine had already arrived and were chatting to a couple motorcyclists. We got our obligatory photo by the Alberta welcome sign. In order to get the camera to take a photo on a timer I had to complete a full out sprint back to the sign. It took two tries as I was no longer used to running!
After our photo, we completed about a 1km of riding to get to the Alberta visitor centre. It was very nice, especially since we were able to eat our lunch inside sheltered from the wind. We hung out for about an hour, reading about all the exciting sights in Alberta (the Dinosaur fossils sounded very exciting – something we had been looking forward to on our trip).
After learning that we were fighting 45km/h gusts of wind, and that we would have a tail wind the next couple of days, we decided to call it a day after only 40km of riding (the least distance since our first day). We knew there was a campground in town since the Alberta map shows all public and private campgrounds on their provincial highway map (very useful!). We asked at the visitor centre and they directed us to the gas station down the road.
We went by one gas station to get to the one that ran the campground in town. I was a little disappointed when we learned that the campground wasn’t actually in town per say but was right beside the gas station and also beside the highway! At this point we really didn’t have much of a choice, but we decided to take a look at the campground before deciding to stay the night. We looked around and it actually seemed reasonable, so we went back to the gas station and asked how much it would be. He quickly looked at me then Katherine, and said just $10. 🙂 The owner at the gas station was actually very nice and friendly, and we had a little chat afterwards.
By this point it was only 3PM in the afternoon but we set up the tent and Katherine had a nap while I went to call my parent’s from the pay phone. Although quite close to the highway, the campground was quite nice with nice views of the rolling hills. We were also the only ones there so we had the entire place to ourselves. And we had free showers with hot water, something we really needed since we missed out on it at the previous campground. All for $10! Only if all campgrounds were like this!
We bought canned chilli at the gas station, and had an early breakfast. It was a peaceful scene with the sunset, except for the mosquitoes that decided to show up. It was so bad that you had to keep moving as you ate. We quickly finished up dinner and made it an early night as we were quite tired. We made sure we were warm with our tuques on in the tent as there was a frost warning for the evening! The train had woken me up in the middle of the night, along with strange coyote noises in the distance, but all it took was some ear plugs to get back to sleep.
Trip Around The World 
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