Gravel Glossary: Miami Mud

It rained a lot over the weekend here in southern Manitoba, where my wife’s parents live, but the gravel roads out by the Miami Hutterite Colony where I rode yesterday were mostly hard and smooth. Mostly.

On a whim, I decided to turn down an unmaintained road—the kind with a strip of grass growing down the middle, the kind that that has not been beaten down by vehicle traffic. Any vehicle traffic. The road looked fine, but it wasn’t. Within seconds I experienced a distinct riding-in-quicksand sensation. Mud and tiny bits of gravel flew scattershot on my legs and clung to my tires like prairie barnacles at the same time. I detected a strange, low rumble coming from the vicinity of my tires. Then it hit me: it was the Miami Mud, laughing at my Clement MSO tires.

Tour of Alberta 2015 Preview

Photo credit: Edmonton Journal

Feels like this could be a  breakaway year for the Tour of Alberta bicycle race. After a couple of years of mixed results, during which the race sometimes suffered from uninspired route choices and an uncertain identity, the T of A is showing signs of finding its form. Here’s why:

Camping at the WBR

One of the highlights of our family’s recent camping vacay in Montana and Idaho was a short stay at the Whitefish Bike Retreat (WBR), a gem of a spot about 10 miles northwest of this ski-resort town in northwest Montana. The WBR opened in 2013 and has been growing steadily, catering to mountain bikers and touring cyclists alike. The location is key: the WBR is trailside lodging for the terrific Whitefish Trail system, 26 miles of smooth single track; it’s only a minor detour off the Adventure Cycling Association’s popular Northern Tier route; and it’s also close enough to the Tour Divide route that Divide riders have been known to swing by for visit. The WBR has a bunk lodge where you can sleep in a bed and cook in a communal kitchen, but we opted for the camping.

Bindloss, of Alberta

Site where the school once stood in Bindloss

"Last had come the prairie--the land of promise--which seemed to run on forever, flooded with brilliant sunshine under a sky of dazzling blue."--from Prescott, of Saskatchewan (1913) by Harold Bindloss

Believe it or not, the idea for our Rural Alberta Adventure began with Bindloss, a tiny hamlet about 100 km north of Medicine Hat. Back in May, Val and Penn and I sat staring at a map of Alberta, wondering where we should go. We were thinking Badlands, for starters, but then where? Penn pointed to an empty area east of Dinosaur Provincial Park and said, "Why not try here?" The nearest town on the map was Bindloss, which, we quickly discovered, was named after an obscure English writer who wrote over 40 novels in the early 1900s, many of them set in the Canadian west, including one with the fabulous title Prescott, of Saskatchewan.

None of us had ever been to that part of Alberta, and, certainly, none of us had ever heard of Harold Bindloss or his Prescott. We were intrigued. That sealed it. We would ride through Bindloss, on a kind of reverse literary pilgrimage.