Day: 99
Mile: 10,258
The topography, climate and the air quality has changed dramatically in the past several days, to say the least. Smoke from the wildfires north of us is following us south.
We left Medicine Hat, Alberta yesterday morning after a walk in an amazing dog park, located right across the street from our camp grounds. This Medicine Hat city dog park is an inspiration for all dog parks. It’s about 20 acres with trails for humans to run or walk and lots of area for dogs to run and play. Kaizen loved it.
Occasionally, the smoke cleared and I realized there is a certain kind of beauty to this part of southern Canada.
The traffic was light on Canada Highway 1. The road wasn’t that much different than some of the roads in Alaska. Patches of gravel, no center or side lines etc. What traffic we saw were large trucks or farm equipment in the fields and on the roads. There was a point when I thought I was in a Mad Max movie with all the smoke, dust and heave equipment all around. (Oh my imagination.)
Our plan was to continue east to Moose Jaw and drop down to enter the US in North Dakota. Somewhere between Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw the smoke got to us and we decided to see if we could get out of the smoke by heading south. I picked the shortest route from a map we got at a visitor center.
This is not the map from the visitor center, just an image from my phone to give you an idea of the big picture. I basically picked the shortest, and most remote route. We crossed the boarder in the US approximately at the red arrow. Blue dot is where we spent last night. Not much out here and getting to the boarder and then finding a camp site was a true adventure.
Our new route had us leaving Canada Highway 1 and headed south on Highway 21. On this entire trip we have been super conscience about our fuel level. We took everyone’s advice and filled up every chance we got so as not to be in the middle of no where and run out of gas. We were so eager to get out of the smoke we just took off and headed south…. with a quarter of a tank of gas.
I was so nervous, first about the route I had chosen, then about our fuel level. I am sure you can imagine the conversations taking place in the Greyhawk at this point. But the scenery was spectacular. We were driving through miles of canola fields.
Well, we didn’t run out of gas. Fortunately, we found a grain Co-Op with a fuel pump. We weren’t so lucky with the route.
Route 21, which on the map indicated was a “thin membrane surface” road, (what ever that means) turned into 20 miles of gravel and grasshoppers.
After miles of gravel the road turned back into a paved road and then suddenly there was the boarder crossing.
We handed them our passports and then the boarder patrol officer asked: “Why did you come this way?” Gary’s response, “I like Joni Mitchell and wanted to see Saskatoon. Can you help us clean the bugs off the camper?” (And I told him not to joke with the boarder patrol.)
They boarded our camper, looked through a few things and then took our eggs, celery, lettuce, lemons, limes, and a bag of garlic because it was from Argentina. I couldn’t believe it. We bought that bag of garlic at Costco in Anchorage.
Tonight we are back in the USA, in Bismarck, North Dakota. The smoke has cleared a bit, it’s cooler now and we are camping at a KOA with a swimming pool. What a strange and beautifully, wonderful place is our world.
Comments
One response to “Crossing the US/Canadian Boarder”
This leg of your trip was more stressful than the remote areas on your trip to Alaska. Glad you were let back in the USA even though Gary thought border guards liked jokes. They don’t mess around with nonsense.