Whitemouth, Canada - Polarsteps

Our small off-the-TCH prairie experience was a really good one. The towns we passed through on country roads were quieter; we easily found a picnic table outside a community hall to have lunch at, with working taps outside the building to fill our water (not always this easy). Going through another town, a woman stood at the bottom on her driveway and cheered us on (THE BEST). We did a slight detour to end the day in the small town of Whitemouth, where the Lions Club campground easily wins our vote for the best we've stayed at; it's small, by-donation, impeccably maintained by dedicated volunteers, and offers free showers, water, and picnic shelters to the community-- really simple offerings, but a rare shining example of public space that makes a massive difference to us travelling through, and I'm sure also to the people who live there. Camping was hard through the prairies; with most of the land being private farmland there weren't a lot of wild camping options, so we mostly resigned ourselves to staying at campgrounds but worked hard to find the cheaper ones and would sometimes tack up to 30km onto a day to get to them (I'm writing this from a bit into Ontario, the more appropriate province to touch on the budget-squeezing effect of trying to bike-camp through Canada; more on that later). The campground was next to a little church and the Whitemouth Museum, which was mostly an outdoor collection of old farm implements, military equipment, and train cars; we had a little walk around in the morning. Also pictured: Kini showing off 3 months in bike shorts. -Sara