Edmonton to Wainwright

Heading out from Edmonton we ran into some pretty strong headwinds which slowed our progress. We only made it about 45km to Tofield before we decided to give up for the day and set up camp in the local RV park. The next morning John (the local cycling representative) came by to welcome us to the town with coffee and cookies. It was such a nice treat and friendly gesture! He was able to tell us about the roads (and shoulders) in the area, including accurate distances only cyclists seem to know. We got a later start that day due to visiting, and still faced some headwinds, but with some nasty storms lurking we managed to sneak through into some sunnier and warmer weather.

We passed through some wonderful/interesting towns. Bruce for example, typical small town Alberta has everything someone could ever need in a town as the sign clearly shows. Gas, Diesel, Propane, a Stampede of course and lest we forget a curling rink - Lets just say `Paradise`. Around 70m later we arrived in Viking(Home of the Sutters, for all you hockey fans) where we pulled over to look at our map and figure out a good place to set up our tent for the night. While we were looking, a man came over and started telling us about the local attractions, so we asked him if there was a good place nearby to camp. He offered us his backyard, which turned into his spare bedroom, dinner, breakfast, and a loaf of freshly baked homemade bread for the road in the morning. Thanks Dodds and Sharon! It is so nice to be shown such great hospitality while we travel!

We finally hit some warm beautiful weather and a good tail wind, and made in another 80km to Wainwright. Wainwright, formally a Parks town home to the buffalo is now home to a large Canada Forces Training facility as well as oil, gas and agriculture and was much larger and busier than we were expecting after passing through so many tiny towns.