June 24, 2008: 427 miles, from Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
I woke up early, and peeked outside the tent. Very damp. Obviously rained last night, although I had been so tired that I hadn’t noticed. Got up and brewed some coffee, after flushing my canteen and refilling with nice fresh, sweet water from the pump in the campground.
Woke Jaryd up, and packed-up and the three of us left in light drizzle, heading out to Winnipeg, Manitoba.
We quickly realized that today’s ride was not going to be anything like the sublime ride yesterday……cold, wet and long, boring-looking straight roads. But……hey, this beats WORK, right! It’s all good. 
After droning down the 17 and battling the strong headwinds for a couple of hours, we were ready to stop for a bite, and found a roadside place in the tiny settlement of Upsala.
Now, I must tell you that it’s not often that I find myself in a situation where a waitress is simply downright rude, without provocation, to the point that one wonders what possibly could have caused the issue. This was one of them.
Understand that because all of us were on the proverbial “high” from simply being on this trip, and as we were so often ravenously hungry when we stopped at these roadside places, we tended to joke with the waitresses and have some fun. We very quickly found that, for some reason, the hagged looking waitress at this place was very clearly NOT interested in being friendly or nice to either Mike or myself, but seemed to take a decided shine to Jaryd.
Needless to say, Jaryd thought this was right and appropriate, given his young man’s charm!
Anyway, the food was pretty good (or we were simply even more starving than we thought!) and we were quite content after demolishing another large breakfast of eggs, hash-browns, sausage links, toast with a few cups of coffee, as we climbed on the bikes to continue our trip.
Next minute, the waitress comes running outside with a very angry look on her face, shouting that we had not yet paid!
Mike and I looked at each other with some puzzlement, and then realized that we’d crossed signals somehow, as I had said it was Mike’s turn to pay for the meal as we were finishing up, and he obviously didn’t hear me and assumed that I’d settled the bill as usual, so off he went and paid the grumbling waitress. Seemed kinda fitting that we made her day even worse!
The rest of the ride was uneventful, other than at the next gas stop, we had an old guy come up to us after he’d being eyeing our bikes so laden and with off-road tires on the back, and ask us where we were from, and where we were heading out to…
This was something we had happen so often when we stopped for gas, or meals, etc and we loved the chats with these strangers. So many elderly men (mostly) have come up to us and asked us where we’re going, and they seem genuinely sorry that they can’t join us on this adventure. Every single one of them have said that they wish us well, and to take care, and for us to enjoy our ride. So very cool to talk with these local folks and fellow travelers!
As we approached Winnipeg, I stopped to search for campgrounds on the GPS. With us not pre-planning any stops during the trip after the first 2 days, we basically rode until we felt tired, or it was approaching the 10PM camping office closing time (which we found to be the standard campground close-up time).
Despite me upgrading my GPS’s Canada maps before the trip, we quickly found that the TomTom One GPS does NOT have a great deal of “Points Of Interest” (such as camp grounds, hotels, etc) in these middle parts of Canada and so our choices for camp grounds as we entered Winnipeg were very limited.
We eventually found one that was not too far from our current position, and so headed off in that direction and came upon this VERY derelict and empty looking campground. As we were rather tired, we discussed whether to give it a try or move on to another place – and decided to see if anyone was in the office for pricing details.
The old guy looked at us, and informed us that we were very early in the season, so the campground was empty except for one couple, so he would allow us to pick a spot and charge us the princely sum of $4 each for the night! Deal!!!
Looking around, we quickly realized that what we initially thought were campers were simply RVs and caravans parked there, without anyone actually staying there at the current time. Kinda spooky, but we were tired and couldn’t care.
Some pics of the camp ground in Winnipeg…
We setup tent amidst a swarm of very hungry mosquitoes. So bad were they, that I pulled out my dorky but effective wide-brimmed mosquito-net hat, and put on a long-sleeved T-shirt to help avoid the stinging vultures they call mosquitoes in these parts. Man, these things are like rabid, flying Pterosaurs! I’m convinced that thre of them could take off with anyone weighing less than 150 lbs if they wished!
We were starting to get hungry, so decided that we needed to take a ride to find a local restaurant, and hopped on the bikes and set off in search for some grub. We soon realized that this part of Winnipeg had very little to offer in the way of eating establishments so I powered-up the GPS and found a Subway a few blocks from where we’d stopped.
We rode over to find the all-night Subway open and empty in a grubby part of town, so we grabbed a table at the window where we could keep an eye on the bikes. It became natural to expect to have to look out for the bikes in any of the larger towns/cities we were traveling through, while we almost sub-consciously understood that there was little need for vigilance whenever we were in the small villages or rural settlements.
After the normal Subway fare (which reinforced our new realization that prices in Canada seem to be almost double what they are in the USA for identical stuff), we headed back to the campground under direction from Mr. TomTom.
I made a cup of coffee on the mini-stove and headed off to bed (I never suffer from caffeine-induced insomnia and so often enjoy a couple of late-night mugs of the stuff)
Tomorrow is going to be a long slog to Saskatoon!