June 25, 2008: 499 miles, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
I woke up this morning, grabbed a fresh change of clothes, my toiletries and towel and shot over to the ablutions block with showers before the mosquitoes could form an attack squadron.
As the men’s showers were not working properly, I knocked on the ladies door knowing that there could only be a single female in the whole campsite using the facility. It was empty, so I ducked quickly inside, stripped down and turned on the hot water in the very grungy looking shower, while eyeing the loose shower tiles and bare cement floor that looked as if it hadn’t had a scrubbing in many years. I decided to wear my sandals in the shower, for fear of catching some bacterial growth undoubtedly living in that dark enclosure!
The shower block…looked much better outside than inside!
I had visions of spiders and cockroaches hiding behind the tiles and linoleum pasted on the walls, but other than one or two small spiders, had no surprises and I enjoyed rinsing the road grime off my rather substantial body! 
Getting back to the tents, I woke Jaryd from his slumber, and with Mike (again) ready and waiting for us, we packed the bikes and left for Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Looking at the map on Mr. TomTom, my friendly GPS, it was very apparent that we were in for another day of almost dead straight, flat roads across the interior of Canada. Oh well, we knew that there would be more interesting roads and scenery when we get into British Columbia and the Yukon!
Heading out from Winnipeg on HWY-1, again battling the headwinds coming from the West, we droned along the straight roads until the Junction with HWY-16, where we turned right (North) and proceeded along the 16 until we became hungry and decided to stop for an early lunch at the little town of Gladstone. We initially thought the town had more to offer so went past the first (only) restaurant we saw, but after passing through town we realized we needed to turn around and retrace our steps to that restaurant on the east side of town, called “Road Hogs Grill”
We sat down at the window table and a very attractive and cute waitress came up and took our orders. We promptly decided we like this place, no matter what the actual food tasted like.
Afterwards, we headed out on HWY-16 again and settled into the drone.
On these types of roads, I was learning how to get comfortable for hours and hours of riding. I found that if I positioned by pack behind me just close enough to allow my lower back to snuggle into it, and place my feet on the rear (passenger) foot pegs, and leaned forward with my left forearm resting on the handlebar grip and my hand forward on the junction between the screen and the front fairing plastic, with my right hand and arm similarly positioned (which requires the throttle lock that I’d installed previously to be engaged to prevent the throttle from closing), and with my tummy resting on the tank bag sitting on the gas tank, I could literally float along for hours, in relative comfort.
Comfort, that is, until my own rear end starts to get sore from the thinly padded and narrow seat cushion (despite the wonderfully luxurious feeling sheepskin “butt-pad” I’d installed on the seat. There’s only so much that 1” of sheep skin can do, to keep the dreaded butt-pain from developing into a raging, throbbing, searing, pain area of the body!
This is why we have realized that key for us inexperienced long-distance bike travelers, is to stop every 90-120 minutes, and take a short break, while filling the gas tanks or grabbing a quick bite to eat.
The long road to Saskatoon….
Me taking a picture of Mike taking a picture of precisely nothing! See below…
Filling up at some tiny place, with above ground gas storage tanks…
You know you’re getting desperate for a change in scenery when you stop to take a picture of a little dam!
Heading into the late westerly sun we were getting quite sunburnt on our faces, through the visors, so we stopped to apply sunscreen and lip balm. It was soon after this stop, that Mike told me that he’s noticed that my headlight was out. I’d also noticed at the same time that the power to my GPS and hand grip heaters was out, and I started to worry that my re-wiring of the front-end of the bike, with all the extra electrical doo-dads (heaters, cellphone charger, gps charger, 2-way radio charger, etc) had introduced a short somewhere.
Later, as I tried to go through my mind where the problem could be (while droning down the highway), I started to think that it may be even worse….perhaps the alternator rotor, which I’d removed and re-installed during bike prep, may be coming loose, and the rotor has taken out the stator and I might soon be out of all power from the alternator! There was nothing I could do right then and there, so I rode on without hand grip heat or headlamp, and I resolved to fix the problem early the next morning.
Anyway, we got into Saskatoon and I hit Mr. TomTom with a query on available campgrounds and it came back with a place in town. We thought this was a little unusual, but followed the navigator to a very seedy part of town, to the exact address.
….to find that we were literally in the “Hood” right opposite an injection syringe drop-off post across the road from a very clearly drug house. We were becoming the object of attention for the very down and out locals in the neighborhood, so decided it was prudent to move on, and look for a hotel instead.
Mr. T gave us the location of a cheap sounding hotel called the “Thriftlodge”, so off we went and found this truly dreadful place in town, but desperation for a break from those hard seats, and the thought of a nice comfy bed prompted us to fork over a rather ridiculous CA$137 to the receptionist/manageress who clearly was quite proud of her, shall we say, errrr…ahhhh…..ummmm….abundant chest enough to offer a more than adequate glimpse to anyone interested enough to look! 
For some reason, the only picture that either Mike or I took of our overnight in Saskatoon was of me with the bikes, outside the reception area of the hotel.
After unpacking the bikes, tires, etc and hauling all the stuff upstairs to our room, we took a walk to look for a somewhere to eat, and saw that a MacDonald’s was located right across the street from us. We had hoped for something other than a big Mac to eat, but what the hell, it was convenient and we couldn’t wait to eat and have a shower and good rest, after another 10-hour day in the saddle, so Ronnie it was….
I must tell you that with the room having only a single king-sized bed and a small TV room with pull-out couch, Mike very quickly volunteered to sleep on the couch which left Jaryd and I to share the large bed……something neither of us were crazy about, but it sure beat a cold tent on a deflating air mattress in the middle of nowhere!
Tomorrow, we’re hoping to finally cross the less interesting part of the trip, and get into the mountains and true wilderness areas, and see some of the real wildlife we were dying to finally come across. We know that we will see grizzlies and black bear on the side of the road, eating the berries of late Spring/early Summer, as well as moose, buffalo, elk, eagle, falcon and maybe even a wolf or two if we’re real lucky! And, if we eventually do make it all the way up the Dempster Highway to Inuvik, we may even see a polar bear if we’re incredibly lucky!