Portage morning

Our second century ride of the tour began with breakfast at 6:30. By 7:00 am we were underway leaving the Portage fair grounds and heading out of town. It was another beautiful morning and the secondary highway we were on had very little traffic making for a pretty nice ride.

Michel visiting with granddaughter

In St. Francois Xavier Michel had a chance to visit his granddaughter. She was visiting her other grandparents who lived right along the road we were riding on.

Soon we were in Winnipeg making our way to the Forks. As we approached Main Street I took a detour to the Wawanesa building where I spent about 30 minutes visiting with Barbara and several other former work colleagues. Then it was on to The Forks where we had something to drink and ate a sandwich.

Barbara and me

I must say that Winnipeg does have some nice bike trails. Riding through “The Peg” did provide a nice diversion from miles of open highway.

With nearly 70 km left to go we didn’t have time to look around The Forks. A short ride brought us to the Northeast Pioneer Greenway Belt which is a beautiful paved bike trail that takes you almost right out of the city. From the north end of the city it was about 50 km of riding with no convenience stores along the way to stop at for a snack or to refill a water bottle. It was a hot afternoon and by the time we rolled into Beausejour all three of my water bottles were empty. We stopped at the first store we came upon and I bought a .5 litre Gatorade and a 1 litre chocolate milk and downed them both. After resting a bit we rode the remaining few kilometres to camp.

Camp in Beausejour

Our total distance today was 175 km. And the good news … tomorrow we get to do it all again!