I’m sending out a second edition of the Halfway Highlights because after I sent the first, I realized I’d forgotten to include some I’d thought up on the road heading into Thunder Bay. I also came up with some more on our trip to Nipigon on Wednesday. So here is Halfway Highlight Awards Part Deux:

The Campground-Not-A-Campground Award: To the City of Lloydminster’s Weaver Park campground. We’d slogged through more than 150 km to get to Lloyd and found the site fairly easy, which was a relief after the longest leg of the journey coming from Vegreville, only to be told, “Sorry, we don’t allow tents,” by the young attendant that day. “What! You’re kidding right?” we said to him. “No, we don’t allow tents.” We were too tired to find another spot so we splurged on a hotel instead.

If It’s Free It’s Probably Too Good To Be True: We rolled into Russell glad to finally put Saskatchewan behind us and take on Manitoba. The girls behind the desk at the city’s visitors centre told us the municipal campground was free. Great. Not so great. We took a look and realized the camp was wide open, right in the middle of town and vulnerable, especially if we set up our tents and then headed to dinner. We had good reason to worry about that (see next item). Once again, we opted for a hotel, The Jolly Lodger.

Not Egg-xactly a Nice Place: The campground in Vegreville, Alta., is situated in a beautiful little park with the WOW! feature being the city’s huge Ukrainian Easter Egg weathervane. When we arrived it was bustling with families taking advantage of the nice Saturday afternoon. Quite pleasant. But there were two downers. For one, train tracks split the campground in two, and couple of big trains rolled through not only with whistles blaring but causing the ground to shake as if we were in an earthquake. As we went to dinner we noticed that end of downtown Vegreville wasn’t egg-xactly brimming with the town’s blue bloods. We were camped right beside a picnic cooking enclosure and Clive hung his snazzy Mountain Equipment Co-op travel towel in there to dry overnight. About 5 a.m. we heard some guy singing as he wound his way through the bushes. I noticed he went into the enclosure but didn’t realize Clive had left his towel there. Sure enough, when he went to get it it was gone, and the prime suspect was The Singing Vagrant.

Not Rookie of the Year Candidates: There are two that seemed to eliminate themselves from the early going. We were checked in at Vegreville by a cute blonde high schooler who was likely in just her first weekend on her own. Checking in a couple of cycling tenters through her for a loop, and she had to call her boss at home about three times to help get us loaded up on the computer program. She was quite polite about it though apologizing like crazy. But the one that took the cake might be the high school genius who checked us in at North Battleford’s city campground. She asked Clive for a phone number to input into the computer. “I don’t have one,” he said. “But I have to have one to register you,” she said. “How can I if I don’t have one?” Finally I piped up from a chair behind Clive, where I was in the process of slaking a thirst gathered from battling wind and riding about 135 km by downing three cans of Diet Coke, and gave her mine. Great, problem solved. But then she wanted a licence plate number. “We’re on bicycles, we don’t have licence plates,” said Clive. She couldn’t comprehend that logic. Believe it or not, she actually called her supervisor to make sure it was all right to check us in without a licence plate number. Hopefully, both girls have got the hang of it by now.

Bad/Good Timing For A Breakdown: My back wheel basically collapsed on me as we reached Yorkton. We made our way to that city’s campground, at least feeling fortunate that it happened right at the end of that day’s journey. But this misfortune happened on the Sunday of the May long weekend and no bike shop in that town was open. Oh, oh. But our good fortune continued when it turned out the camp’s operator had a huge truck container he’d converted into a workshop with all the tools anyone could want. With the help from the operator, Clive was finally able to tweak the ball bearings in the wheel so I could at least limp my way through two days of riding into Manitoba and make a trip into Brandon to pick up a new wheel.

Most Annoying, Ungrateful, Grumpy Cashier: It was a nice warm day as we climbed up and down the hills of Highway 5 in British Columbia on our way between Clearwater and Blue River. We were thirsty, and I stopped at the only gas station/food store the tiny town of Avola had. It looked nice, but when I went in the guy behind the counter was on the phone ranting about many things to the person on the other end, including a lot about Vancouver real estate. He kept talking on the phone while he rung me up, and then once he was off he ranted something about people not cleaning up as he came outside to put some stuff in the garbage. Clive and I looked at each other wondering what got up his butt to make him that ornery. Hope for Brody’s sake he didn’t run into that ornery cuss while he stopped there, although knowing Brody he’d turn the guy into the most generous guy around.

Best Restaurant Lead: The aforementioned Mike Stackhouse recommended we check out Willy’s Tavern in Foam Lake. It was at the end of the worst day of our trip, as noted several times in this blog. So a good meal was welcome. “He smokes everything,” Mike texted to us. The pulled pork sandwich was pretty good, but the perogy appetizer and the side of baked beans were outstanding! Thanks Stack.

Best Escort: The one given by four of Andrew Gossen’s children down their driveway outside of Clavet, Sask., as we left following a nice visit over delicious watermelon and iced tea. Madeline, Hailey and Samuel rode aside Clive down the long driveway while I was late to the parade behind four-year-old Ellie who pedalled her training bike like crazy trying to keep up. The cute factor was over the top. And to top it off, they asked to do it. It was an honour kids!

Best Bicycle Mechanic: Clive. Although I had work done on my Kona Sutra in Winnipeg, it was Clive who has diagnosed the problems, solved many of them, and kept me on the road. Can’t thank him enough.

The Oh, Yeah Forgot About That Award: This goes to me. In the first Halfway Highlights, I mentioned all the family and friends that have invited us into their homes on this trip. I neglected to mention brother Ian and his wife Rosamond invited us to their home-away-from-Fort McMurray-home for a beef and bison burger barbecue. That was a bonus get-together for us during our stay in St. Albert. The reason for it, the wildfire evacuation, wasn’t so wonderful but nonetheless we had a great visit with them and their son Matthew both at the temporary accommodations they’d rented and at the Mennegozzos. Ian also came through with helping us get to a bicycle shop in Edmonton that could provide us the right spokes for my bike.

Big thanks to the Fraser River Fuggitivi cycling group in New Westminster that I have ridden with the past two summers on Sunday mornings for shipping me their new kit which I rolled out for the first day of the second half of the 7Cs. We stopped at beautiful Hillcrest Park overlooking Thunder Bay and Lake Superior to show it off (at top of blog), and also to have a look at what we were leaving behind (below).

Kilometre count

Day 40: Thunder Bay to Nipigon 110 km; Total: 3,541 km