Continuing our trip to Medicine Hat we turn left on Alberta highway 41 south.
An interesting fact that right on the junction of 545 and 41 there is a power station called McNeill.
McNeill was the first power station HVDC installation to dispense with the DC smoothing reactor, a component that most engineers nowadays consider as an absolute must. The McNeill station has been in operation since 1989.
Alberta highway number 41 is officially known as “The Buffalo Trail” and is 686 km’s long that stretches just north of Bonnyville south to the Montana border at Wild Horse entry of the United States.
Did you know that the youngest person ever to head the Government of Canada as the Prime Minister was from High River Alberta, his name was Joe Clark, “Joe Who”, and he was sworn in as Prime Minister at the age of 39.
We pass by the little hamlet of Schuler, population of around 80 people.
In 1997 the last train rolled out of Schuler and today this little community still serves as the service centre for the people in this farming community and surrounding farms.
There are still a couple of elevators to take your grain and there is an elementary school in the community.
Schuler was established in 1910 and was mostly settled by German immigrants.
On this day it was like an ordinary summer day, nice and hot for traveling, but like most hot summer days it can bring in a thunderstorm, today was no different.
We have been watching the angry thunder clouds from Burstall and managed to avoid a few clouds and the rain, but we are just north of the town of Dunmore and this one black cloud is in our way.
I leaned back to Trudy and the only thing I could say was “We are going to get wet”.
If you have ever been hit by a thunder storm I can tell you that you get wet very fast and there is no hiding, one of only a few drawbacks to motorcycling.
Now the things that go through your mind is “Should we Stop?” “Where can we take cover?”
Looking on the horizon I can see that if we press on we will get through it.
We slow down as the water accumulates on the highway and we continue, but this little cloud had one more surprise for us, “HAIL”.
I can tell you that once the hail starts it is a very interesting feeling of hail stones wrapping across your knuckles and hitting the top side of your helmet, good thing that this feeling only lasted a couple of minutes.
Once the hail stopped we were just about all the way through the cloud. One nice thing about being on a motorcycle after a rain storm is that the wind dries you off a little quicker.
In this particular case we had wet shoes for a couple of days.
We made it to Dunmore, the rain had stopped and the sun is out and warm for the final leg of our journey this day.
We hang a right onto the Trans-Canada and into Medicine Hat, find our hotel and change into dryer clothes and enjoy the evening ahead.
Stay tuned for more adventures of The Saskatchewan Traveller…
September 12, 2024
We continue on our trip to Medicine Hat. What a nice visit in Leader, its always a favourite place to . . .