We woke up to what we were sort of expecting. Frost! Needless to say it was a very cold start to the morning, and our bags and bike covers were covered in frost. The upside was that it was a clear day and the sun was starting to shine. The best part was that it was very calm and we no longer had a headwind!
After we packed up the tent we headed straight to the gas station. There we got a hot coffee and a hot chocolate, and asked if we could use their microwave to cook our oatmeal. The owner again was very nice and said it would be no problem. We used the hot water from their hot water container that made the cooking of the oatmeal much faster!
We ate the oatmeal outside as we sat on their bench. Traffic was very light and with the sun shining on us it was very peaceful.
It was great cycling once we got back on the highway. What a difference the wind makes! The scenery was spectacular and there was hardly any traffic. We passed by a sign that warned of Buffaloes, and to view them only from your vehicle. What are cyclists suppose to do??
Things were pretty quite until we got near Medicine Hat. It was a much bigger city than we had anticipated, and the traffic was much heavier. We stopped by the giant Super Store where we had our first lunch and stocked up on food.
Afterwards we kept on trucking. The wind had really picked up and we were making good progress with tailwind, that was, until I failed to avoid a piece of road debris and got a large nail puncture my rear wheel. Even our brand new Schwalbe Marathon Plus tire couldn’t prevent that nail from puncturing the tube as it went right through! We were about 3km outside of Suffield and on the side of the highway. I was not too pleased but managed to change the tube rather quickly and we were on our way after about a 30min delay. I checked to make sure the tire was fine since it was a rather large nail. We had done so well with our lack of flats on the entire trip but the last week had seen us get 3!
We stopped at Suffield to wash our hands from changing the tube, and also had our 2nd lunch of the day. To get to the pizza/sub store we had to go into town, but to our surprise there was a campground there as well. We heard from one of the ladies who was hanging out with her friends at the store that there was a group of girls who were cycling east who had stayed there about a week ago. We were surprised we hadn’t run into them!
After Suffield, we pushed our way towards Brooks. We spotted our 3rd herd of Pronghorn Antelope (we are now experts 😉 ) of the trip. They were just off the highway in a farmer’s field.
As we continued on, we came by more and more oil and gas fields, and we could smell the gas or its byproducts from the small gas plants by the highway. We saw many pick up trucks both on and off the highway.
As we got near Brooks we decided to call it a night at the Tillbrook Provincial park rather than pushing towards the town. The campground was pretty much empty and we were the only tenters there. To our surprise, there were still a few mosquitoes! They were not too bad, but there were hundreds of little non-harmful bugs that were attracted to our yellow panniers. It was quite peaceful to be camping slightly away from the trains and highway for a change.
Trip Around The World 
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