On loose chips

For various reasons, I left the Hostel relatively late. Consequently, I opted for Plan B for getting out of Calgary, namely taking the C-Train to Saddletowne. From there, I managed to leave City quickly though not without some creative interpretations of road usage and a bit of off-roading required by a road closure and a unidirectional interchange. This put me on Highway 564 which had very little in the way of a shoulder but was going due East which was the way I wanted to go and meant I had a tailwind.

I came to Highway 9 which is what I really wanted and which will likely feature in this blog until Saskatchewan when it will become Highway 7. It took me North and East with a hard shoulder that was almost a lane wide. Rather regrettably, there was a looong section having a new seal coat added. I gather this means spreading tar and then gravel of about one centimetre size. Unfortunately, the process did not include the shoulders so there were a lot of what was termed “loose chips”, i.e. loose gravel. It was very annoying to the point that I was considering making “loose chips” a personal swearword as it was biting into the high sustained speed I was otherwise making through the fields of Alberta.

The fields seemed to go on forever beneath the big sky. As I child, I once had a vivid mental image conveying the idea of an infinitely large planet being a car driving across flat farm land that would never end. The image had a 1950s feel, the car being a station waggon with a family with 2.5 kids in it.

At one point, a flatbed truck went by with a pair of police cars on it marked Summerville Sheriff’s Department. Hmm, I thought, I guess those are the new cars being delivered. Then it struck me that I didn’t think that Alberta had such Sheriff’s Departments and that I couldn’t place Summerville in Alberta and it didn’t seem like an Alberta-type place name.

Nearing Drumheller, I was pleasantly surprised when the road curved to avoid Horseshoe Canyon. For one thing there was a place to buy a nice, cold drink. More importantly, the Canyon dramatically appeared out of nowhere. It was simply a gap in the Earth. It is what I think of a Badlands type-canyon, i.e. gently eroded from seemingly muddy type rocks. I chatted with a mother who expressed a desire to one day go on a bike tour. She couched it in terms of "but not until her kids were older", which was sensible enough.

I don’t think I knew how big Drumheller was. As I came into town, the signs made me realise my mental image was off. First there was the penitentiary. Then a Canadian Tire, and finally a Walmart. I turned onto the street leading to downtown only to see a barrier and very strange vehicle making its way toward me. A closer look showed it to be a large black pickup with a camera mounted at the end of a large crane. At the barricade, I was approached by a young lady who explained the downtown was being used as a film set. I asked if the film was set in “Summerville” perchance? It was. Summerville, Oklahoma in fact. My B&B hosts told me it was the fourth film shoot this year.