August 20 - Prince Albert, SK - Flin Flon, Manitoba - 260 Miles

After all the good weather we've had, today we rode in the rain most of the day.  Riding a motorcycle about 200 miles in the rain is not the most fun thing to do, but not all that bad.  We have good windshields and fairings on the motorcycles for wind and rain protection, and we have good riding suits for warmth, with rain clothes over those.

The biggest problem on the highway today was the infamous "Chip Seal" repair.  As we reported earlier, the repair with Chip Seal is difficult enough in dry weather for motorcycles.  But add rain and poor visibility, and it is really bad news.  We rode over many, many repairs with Chip Seal today, and in fact most were no problem because they had been done well in the past and the gravel, dirt and calcium chloride were as hard as the pavement.  However, we did run into a few spots where this mixture was recently spread on the pavement, and this provided a few uneasy moments.  The biggest problem was that in the rain one couldn't tell an aged patch from a brand new one.  However, we rode sort of gingerly and arrived at our destination with no accidents.

Flin Flon is just inside the Manitoba province, so we rode mostly in Saskatchewan today.  At our hotel last night, a young man told us: "Most people think of Saskatchewan as totally a "Plains" province; but in fact only one third of Saskatchewan is plains.  The other two thirds have forests, provincal parks, and some cattle ranching."

This matched our ride today, since we left the plains as we rode north, and passed mostly through forested area.  There are many large lakes in this northeastern part of Saskatchewan, with a few of them available for fishing and camping, but most seemed quite pristine.

We didn't see any wild life today.  We decided all of the animals were in some place of shelter from the rain.

We did learn a little more about the "Elk Ranches".  The elk are indeed raised for meat, but also for their antlers.  The antlers are sold to the Japanese and Chinese.  That's why we haven't seen any bull elk with antlers in the ranch enclosures.  But today we did see two or three bull elk with small antlers.  On the same ranch with one group of elk, the rancher was also raising buffalo.  We have not seen elk on the menus of Canadian restaurants, but we have seen buffalo meat on menus.

All in all, today was a fun day.

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