After we crossed into Alberta the terrain flattened out, and the scenery was much less interesting. I had to struggle to choose some good photos. We've been spoiled by the grandeur of Alaska and the great wildlife.
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| Smokey Alberta |
Many parts of British Columbia have been experiencing serious fires. We have not been impacted by the fires or the smoke until now. Upon entering Alberta we observed a significant haze for the next day or two.
The town of Beaverlodge Alberta has a cute mascot. He was even bigger than the Giant Beaver we saw at the Yukon Beringia Centre.
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| I'd like to see the dam this guy makes. Might be Hoover-like. |
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| Wiiiiiiiiide load! Tall too! |
We meet lots of wide loads on the highway, but this one was wider than most. Click HERE to see a video of the wide load.
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| Camp Wally World in Weyburn SK |
We had planned to buy some fuel at the Costco in Saskatoon SK. They had the best price for diesel of any place we would be passing through while in Canada. Dorcas mapped us to the store, and we pulled up to the pumps, but we couldn't see a diesel pump. I hollered out the window to an attendant and asked which lanes had diesel. He said they didn't sell diesel here. WHAT??? "GasBuddy.com says you do". "Oh, I think they sell diesel at the new store across town". CRAP!!. By then I was in a bad place. We needed to get out of there, but I was fairly close to the pumps, and we can't back up with the car in tow. I then proceeded to make the worse decision I have made during this trip. There was a space large enough to drive a car through between the cars ahead at the pump lane on the left and the pump lane on the right. But apparently there was not enough room to pass a motor home. The good news is I cleared the cars on the left side. The bad news is I wasn't so lucky on the right side. Why this guy had his fuel door open on the side away from the pump, I'll never know. I thought I had made it, and we pulled over beyond the pumps to ponder our next move. A few minutes later a guy in a pickup pulled up, and he was PISSED! It turns out that I had hit his open gas cap and bent it such that it wouldn't close. I apologized profusely while he was cursing and calling me an idiot (I couldn't argue with that). I offered to pay him for the damage, but that didn't seem to help. After he ran out of breath and curse words he got in his truck in left. It's a good thing Canadians can't carry hand guns. If this had happened the next day in North Dakota I think I would have been shot. After he left I looked at the passenger side of the coach. OUCH! Faithful readers will remember the sine-wave shaped scratch a hiker put down the side of the coach during our passage to Skagway on the ferry. Now I have a matching straight-line underscore to that one. Unlike the Skagway scratch, this one was totally my fault and resulted from a moment of extreme stupidity. That makes it even worse. I think I'll blame it on Dorcas; she should have stopped me (he didn't listen when I tried D). We left Saskatoon without buying fuel. I figured we should get out of town as soon as possible before the guy changed his mind and called the cops.
I saw a single hay bale in the median of the highway and remarked to Dorcas it must have fallen off a truck. Then I noticed there were numerous hay bales in the median and along both shoulders. Apparently the Provincial government allows farmers to harvest hay on the highway right-of-way.
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| Saskatchewan is big on farming |
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| And filled with smoke |
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| Dorcas, I thought I told you to clean the windshield! (Farm country!) |
Our final border crossing was largely uneventful. The customs agents did enter the motor home, however. I think they were checking to see if we were smuggling Canadians or other human cargo across the border. They peaked into the trunks of the cars ahead of us, but nobody seemed to be searched or detained.
We stopped in Minot ND, the first fair sized town we came to after we crossed into the US. I wanted to have some lab tests done to be assured that my infection had cleared up before we entered the Boundary Waters for a two-week wilderness trip the next week. This day we drove 378 miles and spent the night at the Walmart in Grand Forks ND. We found that we were running a little ahead of schedule and could afford to slow down a bit.
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| Our camp at Grand Forks ND |
We visited for a while at Itasca State Park in north central Minnesota. Lake Itasca is the origin of the Mississippi River.
I always assumed that the word "Itasca" was an Indian word. In fact, it is a combination of the Latin words veritas ("truth") and caput ("head").
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| Check out the cool solar array on the Visitor Center building |
The big thing to do here is wade across the Mississippi River.
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| Wading the big(?????) muddy. |
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| Wading the Mississippi at the mouth of Lake Itasca |
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| Where else can you find a giant toucan, pink flamingo, Pegasus and rubber ducky all together? |
The next day we drove only 248 miles and spent the night in Hibbing MN.
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| This is what it looks like shooting though a door screen |
Hibbing MN is a mining town in the Mesabi Range mining district. It's major claims to fame are that it is the site of the largest open pit iron mine in the world, and it is Bob Dylan's home town. Rocks and rock and roll. As usual, we spent the night at the Walmart Supercenter.
After sleeping late and having a leisurely breakfast we drove the final 82 miles to Ely MN, which will be our jumping off point for our traditional annual canoe trip into the Boundary Waters.
