2005 200K Elk Island

May 14, 2005

This morning's waking time was 3:45 am ... and I almost rolled over and went back to sleep. But at 4:40 am I was heading down the road toward Edmonton. It was a pleasant drive ... sunrise, pretty scenery, and I saw a coyote!

I met up with the organizer of the Edmonton brevets and precisely at 7:00 we set off. He kept up a pretty good pace till we reached Elk Island park, and I struggled a bit to keep up. When we turned into Elk Island park we had the wind at our backs, and we sailed along quite comfortably to Lamont.

There are often buffalo wandering free in the park, but I didn't see any until we left the park and then they were in pens. Just beyond the buffalo was a massive graveyard for old farm equipment, mainly, and also vehicles and other things. There were a few interesting things in there.

click to supersize Buffalo

From Lamont to Mundare we faced a strong headwind and had to take a break part way along just to get out of the wind for a few minutes. Mundare's claim to fame is a massive kulbasa which dominated the park across from the gas station where we stopped to get our cards signed. Mundare is only about 25 kms from Vegreville where the massive pysanky is, so perhaps they sort of go together. Mundare also has an old Ukrainian orthadox monestary, grotto, and church which looked rather interesting.

The road from Mundare to Andrew took about 2.5 seconds ... well, OK, it was a little bit longer than that, but we had a GREAT tailwind and averaged over 30 km/h on that stretch. We had lunch in Andrew - a denver sandwich and fries for me - and off we went to the west again.

click to supersize The Mundare Sausage!
Fortunately the wind was from the south east so that road wasn't too bad. There were two things that stood out for me on that bit ... one was the llamas who ran with me as I cycled along. The other was how much that whole area reminded me of the area north of Riding Mountain, near Dauphin. I felt like I was riding my 1000K all over again!

Then we turned to go south toward Lamont, and were right into the wind. 14 kms to Lamont, and it took us over an hour! I was beginning to think Lamont had been wiped off the map!! That road was also very busy and the truck traffic blew me all over the place.

We took a quick stop in Lamont, then entered Elk Island park again ... and again, it reminded me very much of approaching Riding Mountain from the north. Although we were still heading south, and there was still a roaring headwind, some of it was blocked by the trees in the park and it made the trip through the park much more manageable. Once again, I looked for buffalo ... and my searching paid off. There was a massive one standing in some trees right next to the road!!

One thing about the park that added a bit of extra challenge were the cattle gates - I think I'm going to have to check all the bolts on Machak to make sure everything is still tight. However, the park is very pretty, especially now that the leaves are coming out on the trees. There are a number of ponds and small lakes in there, and forests with a variety of trees on either side of the road.

Eventually we arrived at Hwy 16 again with 22 kms to go. Since we were heading west, we had a bit of a tailwind again and were able make pretty good time along there ... and then sailed into the finish area!

Stats:

Distance: 212 kms

Time: 11:21 (18.68 km/h)

Ride time: 9:53 (21.45 km/h)

Max speed: 50.3 km/h