Ok, so I just realized that it's been (AGAIN) almost a month since my last post. I'm really bad at this, apparently. So now, I have to wrack my brain to try and remember the end of my trip. But...here goes.
I arrive in Regina, after flying in on the world's smallest airplane (which by the way, I shared with a cat. Always great for the allergies). Anyway, Robyn picked me up in Regina, and thus began my road tour of the Canadian prairies. First impression of Saskatchewan: It's flat. Just like everyone always said. I've never seen that much sky at one time. It's very cool. Anyway, we make our way to Balcarres, Saskatchewan, population: 500 people. We hang out at her mom's place, get ready, then head out for our pub crawl extraordinaire. I will admit, I was a little skeptical about a pub crawl in a town of 500 people, but we solved that problem rather easily by just going to a different town for each pub. (Yes, we had a sober driver). We hit up three pubs, then call it a night. Good times had by all.
Saturday: trip to Russell, Manitoba. After, of course, stopping in a field of gutted cars on an old farm to procure a rearview mirror for Robyn's car. Yay for car part shopping in Saskatchewan. We head to Russell, party it up, and manage to still leave the next morning at 9 AM, which is pretty good, considering both Robyn's and my combined hours of sleep only equal 4 hours and 50 minutes. I drive.
Then, the border. Three words: Drug Sniffing Dog. We spend 40 minutes inside customs at the border from Manitoba to North Dakota, dressed like the dirtbags we are, while the customs officials literally go through ALL of our bags, take the panelling off inside of the car and open the hood. After escaping without getting thrown in jail, we both decide I will not complain to the customs officials about the drug-sniffing dog hair that is now in the car, since they let the dog in the car. Apparently they have no respect for people who are deathly allergic to dogs. However, my relief at being allowed to get back into the car and leave overrides my desire to complain, and besides, everyone knows you DON'T complain at customs. So I take some allergy pills and we're off. North Dakota was interesting............we saw two cars and a guy on a tractor for the first three hours. Then we stopped in Harvey. It has a gas station. Then we stopped in Fargo, just because I really wanted to, so we had McDonald's in West Fargo. Needless to say, I get pulled over by a state trooper in Fargo. His advice (after pulling us over because I had the shoulder strap of my seatbelt tucked behind me): "Oh...you girls from Saskatchewan?" (yay, Saskatchewan plates) "Um, yes sir". "Oh..well, you have to wear your seatbelts here". NICE. So that was that. In one day, we finally make it to St. Cloud, Minnesota (just one hour short of making it to Minneapolis. Boo). Oh well, anyway, true to form, I'm going to stop this here, and finish this later. Mostly for the suspense factor. Keeps life interesting.
