Grand Prairie, Alberta

"Oh bury me not on the lone Prairie" and the song almost came true. The Beemer broke down, well started breaking down. We had ridden hard from Dawson Creek and coming into Grand Prairie the sky turned blue-black. We donned rain gear and said "what the hell, we are cowboys, let's ride". Four hours later the rain was coming down so hard we could hardly see, we were soaked and cold with temps in the low 40"s. We saw a sign...... Motel Rooms $59. We thought maybe we would be cowboys tomorrow instead. The non- American host said no rooms for $59..... all $99. Both of the cheap rooms were filled. What a come-on. I gave Bruce the "look" and he said in his best Clint Eastwood voice, "let's ride". Forest Gump said, "stupid is as stupid does". We are both "is and does"and so we rode into the night in heavy rain. We finally found a provincial park and set up camp. If you have ever set up camp in a driving rain with ferocious mosquito's.... it is the pits. By the time you get the tent up and the rain fly on, everything inside and out is wet. You get into a wet tent with wet clothes and the worst part is yet to come....... packing up the next day with everything wet.... yuck.... and many pounds heavier.. that is as bad as it gets in motorcycle camping. The rain and heavy cross winds followed us the next day all the way to Edmonton, Alberta. It made us made us break our vow of "no motels". We had not been in one since Indiana but we broke and got one here.
My bike was making "unhappy" noises for the last hundred miles and was getting worse. It is a good thing that it broke down here, as this is the farthest north-west BMW dealership in Canada and is 2,036 miles from the Arctic circle. We were in some extremely remote places since the Arctic circle and any breakdown there would have been disasterous with a long tow job before any work could be done.