The last 500km
Starting this morning under a blue sky from Saskatoon I drove the last 500km to Cold Lake. Even though it was only 5 hrs. I fell tired before reaching the well-known pastures north of the North Saskatchewan River. I remember I could drive without ever getting tired --- some twenty or so years ago.  But that is gone, along with a lot of other things and abilities. I really missed driving our motor home and it's comfortable amenities. These one-tonn trucks have a pretty stiff suspension and with a variable road standard I felt all the imperfections of Canadian road engineering. But the bumps and dips must have kept me awake.


Driving through the town where we used to live since 2002 was a shocker too. Not only is the housing market on an expansive rampage, but the road construction as well. Or what do you think of a 4-lane highway in a town which a couple of years ago had a mere 12,000 people?


Anyway after tomorrow's Sunday Service I have to run errands around town on monday, and that will keep me busy for a good while. 


Can't show you any pictures as I forgot to take the transfer cable for the Canon. But they will be posted after my return. Didn't have too much opportunity to take pics underway, as keeping the rig between the ditches was of the 1. priority.


Take Care!

North Dakota and beyond
Had a great ride from Fargo in to Underwood,ND yesterday. Visiting good friends along the travel route has always been a highlight for me. We went to a local restaurant and I followed the recommendation to try the Chicken Alfredo, and boy was that ever good. By the way I wonder how that "Alfredo" name came into being. Was it Alfredo who invented the reknown sauce? 


It was good to have a 2. pleasant night in a real bed. So be sure I slept like a baby. But I couldn't log onto our friend's network. My laptop just wouldn't do it. COMPUTERS!!


So this morning I left at 8am and was heading north on US 83 to Minot where I did an extra round through town, because my GPS-girl was slightly confused and led me around the wrong turn. Eventually I made it out of town and the Canadian border was coming closer.


The border crossing at Portal didn't make any trouble either, so before I knew it I was on the Saskatchewan prairie, which today was shrouded in dark rain clouds letting occasional showers pour down on me.


After hours of driving in the rain I finally got into Saskatoon's rushhour traffic. What a fun!  And typically the road was full of racing lunatics. The mentality of big city folks. But since I had been in Saskatoon several times before I kinda knew which lane I should be in to make the next left turn. 


So now I am with another couple of friends living out in Pike Lake Provincial Park, a true natural treasure.


Again, I have managed to get myself tired out and looking forward to hit the matrass.


Tomorrow I have a full day of rest, before I take on the last bit of the drive to Cold Lake, Alberta.


Tonight my trip teller shows 4500kms.  Since I used 4.5 days for driving, that is exactly 1000km (620miles) a day. At 60mph it is a little more than 10hrs driving pr. day, plus coffee breaks.


See you later and thanks for keeping me with company on this trip.

September 7

The beautiful Summer...
Like most people I love the summer. Summer is what I live for. That's why I discovered the South. The South is an extension of summer. For me...at least. And that wasn't like that all my life. Oh no, when I was 25yrs. I thought of winter like fun, I wished that 20 inches of snow would fall over night, turning the country into a fairy-tale. I shoveled snow like it was money -- loving every bit of it. But that's over. Alberta's ice-cold winters scared the heck out of me. I still remember, it was the first winter out on the farm, the morning we woke I froze as soon as the warm bed cover was off my body. Looking at the themometer it showed +8C (46.4F) inside the house!! Outside it was -50C (-58F) And that was the reason why the dang furnace wouldn't come on. At -43C propane stops flowing. So we were dead in the water, or shall I say in the ice?

South Saskatchewan River

But we had wood burning stoves and that saved us over the next days,

Rusty train at Vanscoy, SK

No boy, gimme a nice summer and all is fine. Since we have been traveling south we have hardly seen or felt snow. Well, there was Salt Spring Island in march 2009, but it wasn't really much.

Summer is going in shorts and a light shirt, a wonderful breeze off the sea or across the prairie, summer is picnics and BBQ's, is being together with good friends, is hanging out on the beach, doing a lovely walk through a green forest, seeing summer campers driving along and having a ride in a convertible, seeing sailships and catchy motor yachts on the deep blue water; but also little children playing in the sand and biking along the road.  

Pit stop in Texas

I am completely in love with the summer.


But now it's gone. It is September and the first week of it is over as well. It is raining too and that just makes for a day inside. I always wanted to transfer thousands of pictures from my laptop to an external hard drive. So why don't I do that? Exactly!  So I walked over to the Motor Home and got the external drive. 1TB should do and it was still empty. It is the second one I bought. Not that the first one is full. Oh no -- it died - simply passed away as Bea tried to fire it up with a 19V power supply. That doesn't work very long if the device is laid out for 12V. 
Yep that's what happened. And a few weeks before that I fried the original 12V power supply as I plugged it in a 220V German power recepticle. So conclusion is we are slightly "overcharged" people. 

Rio Grande south of Big Bend National Park

Overcharged or simply crazy? Or is that the same -- in the end one never knows. Most of our families are saying (or at least thinking) that we are downright crazy. Spending weeks on end on the road just to be in a bone-dry desert environment for months and months. But like I said: I don't like winters. I would not mind if it would snow in the desert on Christmas Eve -- Tradition and upbringing in a northern latitude - you know. But next day I would want sunshine and sitting outside the rig enjoying my morning coffee at 8am. 

Mission san Jose, San Antonio,TX

But if we don't do it while we still can, we will never do it when we are past 80. Of course I can have a hope that I still drive a rig when being past 80 but one should not completely rely on it. I might need to take the short road, the one which goes about 2km down towards the U.S. border. Up on a hill there is the local nursing home. Yes, Campobello Island is the perfect place to grow old. At our last enquiry they had still 7 rooms available....:-))

Also a result of summer

Summer, summer, summer

And more summer...

Seems I am ramblin' along here, but aren't we bloggers supposed to write something meaningful, something we stand for. And that's me. Have a good one...and live your Dream.

On the road again

May 23


It was Sunday and time to get on the road again. We left Pike Lake Provincial Park at 10 in the morning. In order to get south towards Regina one has to go north first to get through Saskatoon and onto Hwy 11.  With beautiful sunshine we are Happy Campers. 

Saskatchewan -- Land of Living Skies

Saskatchewan is so unbelievably wide and open. 
The flat agricultural landscape seems to go on for ever. About 90 minutes later we reach the little town of Davidson where we know a little rest area. Somebody has gone to the effort to weld a giant coffee can and a coffee cup placing them in the middle of the rest area. Also, there is a bird cage (without birds) and a canopy to sit under.

Inviting for a Rest Stop at Davidson - The Coffee Can

The fiddling farmer and the hay wagon

He's fiddling for the travelers...

A little off to the side, another sculpture (from the same artist?) is made of rusty steel showing a farmer and a hay wagon.

If the fathers of Davidson also would extend the width of the driveway around the rest area it would even be possible to actually PARK there without driving on the lawn.

Crossing the Buffalo Pound River and Qu'Apelle Valley 

At Chamberlain we left the main highway and followed Hwy2 south to Moose Jaw. We crossed the Buffalo Pound Lake where the road showed signs of serious damage from the flooding lake.

Before getting into Moose Jaw we turned east onto the Trans Canada Hwy1 which we followed for a few miles before we turned again, this time to the South-East on Hwy 39 towards the city of Weyburn. Underway we pass the hamlet of Drinkwater which really makes me ponder how such a funny name was chosen for a human settlement.

We reached Weyburn at a quarter to four and pulled into the local Walmart parking lot for the night.  Being at Walmart I found out that we are out of cookies. That had to be changed so off I went to find a bag of chocolate chip cookies, which afterwards were washed down with my favorite cup of coffee.

Tomorrow: South through the border