Day 2

Last night's exhilaration has transformed into fear about the day of biking ahead me. I was kept up for part of the night by a searing pain in my thighs. We plan to bike 40 km today from Belza's to the entrance to the South Gillespie section of the park, and I'm quite intimidated!

After a breakfast of fruit bars and a granola bar, we take to the road but it is quite late by this time, around 10 am, and the day is hot already. The road conditions were ideal but there was quite a lot of elevation change - some uphills and some downhills. The sun was so strong and it got up to about 32C, with no shade to be had. We took shelter in the shade of a sign for the Dixon Community Pasture, which illustrates our desperate attempts to stay cool!

Along the way, we stopped to find the second of five geocaches. It was very near the road, and we crossed through a prairie dog colony to get to it. We found it on a hill very near the spot indicated in the coordinates. The location had a great view of the colony.

We saw some other interesting wildlife today. There were the usual hawks, small birds, cows and horses, but today we also came upon some ducks and pelicans cooling themselves in a small flooded area! The pelicans seem out of place in this prairie, with their big bills designed to scoop fish. But this isn't a mirage! Oddly enough, this is part of the range of the North American White Pelican.

Lunch is turkey pepperettes, granola bar and some nuts. Trying to drink lots of fluids in this heat!

Around 4 pm we had gone about 33 km. We came upon a big hill and I really struggled. The heat, the sun, the sore legs and the idea of another 7 km overwhelmed me and I lost it partway up the hill. I mean full-on sobs of despair... Luc biked to the top and walked down to help me with my bike. We were on private ranchlands about 7 km from the entrance to the South Gillespie block of the park, but I just couldn't make it. We pitched our tent along the side of the road and hoped nobody would ask us to leave. For dinner we ate more jerkey, granola bars, dried fruit.

We each drank 5+ litres of water today. This was more than we planned, so we were running a bit low.

In the evening we had two ranchers stop by, but they didn't give us a hard time. We fell asleep under the watchful eyes of some resident cattle, with the sound of their mooing punctuating the grasshopper hum.