We woke up early and well rested. We again marveled at the fact that strangers had offered such generous hospitality and that we had the privilege to stay in such a cute little camper all night instead of being damp and miserable in the tent. Around 9am we joined Drew and Lori for breakfast which included fresh coffee, scrambled eggs and sausage. We chit chatted and watched a little bit of the summer Olympics with them, then around 10am we decided it was time to hit the road. Lori and Drew joined us outside and saw us off, and I must say that they were truly wonderful people and we were lucky to stumble upon such a great couple.

Soon after we left we entered the town of Athabasca. One of the first stores as you enter town is Canadian Tire, and upon seeing it, Alex immediately turned off the road. We were still short a few tools for the bike in the case that we would have to do our own maintenance; however, I’m beginning to suspect that Alex wants to enter every Canadian Tire in the country. Or at least that’s the way it seems to me.

We quickly found what we were looking for and approached the checkout to pay. Alex asked the woman ringing through our purchase how far it was to Slave Lake, as we wanted to know if we should gas up before leaving town. She responded with “about two hours”. Then she asked another employee that had walked up. This new girl said “about an hour and a half”. Then another employee approached and he prefaced his estimation with “I’ve never been there before”, but then went on to explain in a long rambling fashion that his friend drives from a place fifteen minutes outside of town to somewhere close to slave lake on an ATV in 45 minutes. By the end of it, there were half a dozen employees crowded behind the counter, each with a completely different guess as to how far it was. Overwhelmed by helpfulness, we simply decided that we were just going to go ahead and get gas. The employees dispersed and we completed our purchase. Just as we were about to leave the counter, the cashier answers her ringing phone, says “thank you” and hangs up. “It’s 93km away. Have a nice day.” We found the whole affair uproariously hilarious and we chuckled as we packed our things onto the bike and took off again.

We decided to push on to Slave Lake (which was actually 132km away) before getting gas and when we pulled up to the pumps we realized we had a problem. There was another dark cluster of clouds barreling straight for us. In a panic we quickly gassed up, skipped lunch and started trying to outrun the storm. We started gaining ground and it looked as though we were going to beat it. And then we saw another storm moving in from the left. The day continued like this, watching stormy grey clouds circling us like sharks, and hoping like hell we didn’t get drenched.

Around 5pm, it looked like our luck with the storms was about to run out, so we pulled over and put on our rain gear. Sure enough, we hit pockets of rain the rest of the way to Grande Prairie. As 6:30pm rolled around, we entered the city of Grande Prairie and stopped to get gas and plan our next move. The sun came out and Alex decided to take off his rain pants. We came to the city specifically since there were still a few things we needed to buy before heading off into the wilderness. We discussed whether or not to shop tonight or wait until tomorrow. I was feeling a little nauseous and generally under the weather, so we decided to find a campsite not too far out of town. As we were getting ready to leave, it started raining again, which prefaced an hour long hilarious episode of Alex putting on and removing his rain gear. We checked two places, but one was just for RVs, so we paid our 25 dollars to stay the night at Country Roads Campsite. The clerk that signed us in was very friendly and since he seemed so interested in our trip, we gave him one of our cards so he could follow our adventure online. The site we were assigned turned out to be quite close to other people, but they both spent the night in their tents and were very quite so it wasn’t as bad as we originally thought. We set up the tent and started the fire for the kelly kettle. We ate Mr. Noodles and melba toast, did a little research about the stores we were going to the next day (the campsite offered free internet) then called it a night.

I wonder when I will stop being surprised about the unforeseeable turns our adventure takes. This morning when I woke up, I was thinking that we would leave my parent’s place early in the morning, drive all day and likely set up camp in the rain. That was certainly not the way things went.

Leaving this morning was a drawn out affair, as packing and getting the bike ready to leave was a larger undertaking than we had originally anticipated. Around 1:30pm we said goodbye to my family for what felt like the thousandth time and headed out.

The drive itself was fairly uneventful, but was quite pleasant due to a mixture of beautiful vistas and good weather. I occupied myself on the back of the bike listening to the audio book “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein, which I would highly suggest anyone wishing to know the true nature of modern economics.

Around 4pm we stopped off the highway to take a picture of the bike in front of a rustic looking sign declaring we were in Lac la Biche. Noticing the dark storm clouds moving towards us, we resolved to start looking for a place to spend the night.

Not long after we set back out onto the highway, we noticed a large sign that said “Open Camp”. We couldn’t decide if that meant free camping or not, but reasoned we should check it out anyway since the storm was getting closer.

As soon as we pulled up it became clear that it was not a traditional campsite. The area contained a few scattered trailers, a little cottage, and placed neatly on the fence was a small animal skull. Not to be deterred, we got off the bike and took a quick look around.

Just as we decided to remount and try our luck with the storm, a car pulled into the driveway and stopped in front of the cottage.

A friendly enough looking middle aged man, named Drew,  got out of his car seemingly surprised to find people on the property.

“Is this a campsite?” we ask. He tells us no, and goes on to explain that it is a worker camp that usually houses firefighters when there are big forest fires. We go on to ask if there is any campsites nearby that we could stay at for a reasonable price and he tells us that it would be no problem for us to set up camp on the property. We thank him profusely and start figuring out how we are going to drive the bike onto the field and deciding where the best place would be to weather the storm.

Just then, the man’s girlfriend, Lori, appears and insists that we stay in a camper set up behind the cottage, that way we can keep ourselves and the gear dry when the storm blows in. We are shocked by this show of incredible hospitality, which only increases when they invite us inside for beer and hamburgers.

They were both extremely friendly people and they seemed to be quite enthusiastic about our trip. As we sat companionably in their living room, Drew regaled us with stories from his youth. He told us the tale of his 19 year old self hitchhiking across North America. It has been interesting to find that adventure stories rarely come up when you meet a stranger in normal circumstances, but when you are traveling the world on a motorcycle, everyone loves to tell their amazing adventurous anecdotes.

The burgers were delicious and as far as I can tell, not poisoned or drugged like Alex worried. Like many would in similar circumstances, Alex was worried about the possibility that these strangers would turn out to be a little more sinister than they seemed. I must say, that was not the case at all, they were very kind and there was absolutely nothing untoward about their behavior.  However, I thought he might jump on the bike and make a run for it when we realized the bike was housed in a shed that was usually used for taxidermy, which we figured out only after finding a bloody tarp. Due to the fact that I grew up in northern Alberta, and was quite accustomed to this sort of thing, I wasn’t nearly as alarmed. As it turned out, the closest call we had was when Alex nearly choked due to the fact he slathered is hamburger in incredibly strong Dijon mustard and subsequently spent ten minutes crying and coughing as he ate his burger.

After supper we said our goodnights and made our way to the camper. It was small and cozy and even had a working TV and DVD player. In one of the cupboards we found a large stack of movies, which could only be classified as chick flicks. We chose “Eat. Love .Pray” out of the stack and snuggled in to bed to watch it. The roof of the little trailer leaked (thankfully away from the bed) and the steady sound of little drips was soothing as we discussed how amazing it was to be sleeping in a complete stranger’s trailer, and how lucky we were to have a dry place to sleep for the night. Sometimes life takes you to the most unexpected of places.