International Falls, Minnesota

We did better this morning, got up at 7:00, not 9:00, even though it was again in the low forties. But it was not raining. We did all our usual morning things to get breakfast eaten and ourselves on the road. It was about 8:45 when we said goodbye to campsite 77. Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park has a falls. I just glimpsed them through the mist as we drove into the park last night. They looked pretty spectacular. So on our way out of the park this morning we detoured into a parking lot and walked over to the boardwalk and stairs by the falls.

Spectacular is the word. There were double falls with a 128-foot drop straight down. An elaborate system of boardwalks, platforms, and stairs enabled us to see the falls from top to bottom and various views on the way. There were interpretive signs on the platforms about the history of the river as a highway for the voyageurs and about the geology of the falls. We spent at least a half hour there and could have spent much longer. There are trails, ranger programs and a visitor center we did not even get to enjoy in our brief stay in the park. This is a place to come back to some day, and I noted it in my yellow book.

My battered and stained yellow book holds directions to friends' homes, good hiking trails in parks, favorite campsites in campgrounds, places to visit, and routes to various part of the U.S. from our home. It's been our travel Bible since the early 1980's. Without it, we are nothing - or probably lost.

We turned west from Kakabeka on Highway 17, heading for Fort Frances. At Fort Frances we will cross the bridge to International Falls, Minnesota. Gas prices in Canada are just too high. We abandoned our plan of driving across Canada to British Columbia, and will drive across the U. S. well into Montana before going back north into Canada.

The drive on Highway 17 between Kakabeka and Fort Francis was again through breathtaking wilderness. Bob saw a baby bear cub dead on the shoulder of the highway, which was sad. But we also saw two young moose playing in the brush alongside the road. That was the viewing of a lifetime. Mom must have been close by, but out of sight. The moose stopped frolicking and regarded us solemnly as we passed them, then went back to poking and pushing each other. No, I didn't get out of the car to take a picture. Mom could have taken exception to that and done bad things to me and to the van.

Patches of purple and hot pink lupine enlivened roadside banks and the occasional forest clearings. More often, orange and yellow Indian paintbrush made scattered spots of color along the wayside. The only signs of human incursion were occasional narrow gravel lanes or just two-tracks that began at the highway and disappeared into the wilds. Every now and then a small hand-painted sign announced a camp, lodge, or fly-in hunting/fishing service hidden back wherever one of those dirt tracks went.

There are some serious hills along the Superior Route, but mostly it is a rolling, rocky, forested terrain. The highway often smashes through the hills, leaving rocky outcrops from eight to twenty feet high to frame the pavement. They are ragged and invite a person to clamber up them just because they are there.

Travelers and locals climb the rocks and leave on top souvenirs of their visit in the form of little rock sculptures. All along from Sault Ste. Marie to Fort Frances are little stacks of rocks, most just piled to look like small cairns marking a nonexistent trail. But some are positively artistic. The creators stacked round and flat rocks like card houses, or used pointed rocks for table-like structures. Others were satisfied to leave one or two rocks carefully piled in positions of impossible balance as seen from the road.

As we traveled, we saw a number of paved pull-overs, long ones, that had signs labeling them as “Pulp Load Check” areas. It sounded like a good idea to us. Those pulp wood trucks are piled with logs to the sky, a precarious, swaying, load you don't like to be looking at through your windshield.

There are only two towns along the 230 miles of Highway 17 from Thunder Bay to Fort Frances. We turned north from Rt. 17 onto a local road for a few miles to go to Atikokan, the first of the two towns. A sign advertised that there were 3000 residents in Atikokan. That must have been counting the otters and moose. As with many isolated and now nearly deserted in the North, it had a dispirited air. There was one gas station. The other was out of business. Nearby sagging buildings may have held stores, but were now just eyesores. There were a few modest homes. No one plants flowers in these sorts of towns. I guess there's not enough summer. Snowmobiles or all-terrain vehicles splattered with mud decorate the front yards.

The single gas station was a full-service station, meaning that before Bob could get out of the van, a gal in a wool plaid shirt and blue jeans was there to pump the gas. Bob tried the weather gambit on her, but got only a monosyllable. The gas was pumped in silence.

We got thirty-eight liters of gas, just enough, Bob figured, to get us over the border. Good thing, as it was the most expensive yet. The woman disappeared and a young boy took the credit card and brought out the slip to be signed. I asked him if the sign for Bunnell Park Campground at the edge of town was just a campground, or if it was also a park. It was a tough question. The kid thought for a minute, then allowed it was just a campground. Too bad. It was noon and we needed a place to pull over for lunch. We drove back down to Highway 17 after having found gas, but nowhere to have lunch, and turned west. It was raining again.

In forty-five minutes or so we came to a pulpwood pull-over and slid in beside a loaded semi-trailer without its tractor. It was already one o'clock. I was hungry and had to go to the bathroom. Finally, relief at hand. Nope. Bob pointed to a sign that said “Commercial Vehicles Only.”

Should we stay anyway? Guess not. We'd for sure be right in the middle of our hard boiled eggs and jalapeño havarti cheese when the Ontario Provincial Police discovered us and sent us on our way. We pulled out of the pulp-check pull-over.

In another twenty minutes we came upon a flat gravel circular spot big enough to turn the trailer around in. The only sign said, “Do not remove material from this site.”

We didn't want any of their gravel, we just wanted to sit on it and have lunch. Bob wheeled in and in ten minutes we had hot tea brewed and hard-boiled eggs peeled. We left the gravel pit after lunch and about twenty minutes later down the road - stop me if you've heard this before - we came upon a little wayside park with picnic tables and restrooms. The park was on the shore of one of those pristine forest-verged lakes we have admired along the way. It surely was prettier than a gravel pit, especially in misty rain.

The second town between Thunder Bay and St. Francis was just a wide spot in the road called Mine Centre, a few houses and some more abandoned buildings. As we drove by one home, two Mennonite girls were hoeing vigorously in a large garden in front of the house.

Shortly afterwards we passed a sign pointing towards a Mennonite church, and finally two signs consigning us to hell for one reason or another unless we saved ourselves. The name of the Mennonite church was along the bottom of each sign. It was a good sixty miles in any direction to another village. If they had sought isolation, they found it.

We arrived at Fort Frances in late afternoon, ready to cross the Rainey River into International Falls, Minnesota and find a campground for the night. We drove into Fort Frances, drove through Fort Frances, and drove out of Fort Frances, without finding a clue to an international bridge. A fellow in a car from Iowa sat against a curb with his engine running and a map in his hand. He couldn't find the bridge, either. It was cross the border here or go on down the road for many miles to find another bridge. We turned around to give it another try.

Coming back into town heading east, we happened upon a red car sitting sideways in our lane. We stopped. The car was turning around right in front of a sign that said, “Truck Route to U.S.A.”

When the car, loaded with fisherman, nets, and poles from Wisconsin, got itself straightened up; we pulled up behind it. Ahead of the Wisconsin car, a procession of vehicles stretched off into the distance. This must be the place. After we had crept along for a half mile, we could see that the line snaked into a huge Abitibi paper mill. Who would look for an international bridge in the bowels of a paper mill?

The route got more complicated inside the mill fences. Open yards among the buildings were laced with intra-company train tracks. Signs warned that trains ran at irregular times. Our column of cars also ran at irregular times, and the trick was not to be caught sitting on a track when the line stopped. We had to be conscious that Little Moby was following us and not leave him on a track either.

Finally we began inching our way across the bridge. Huge pipes strapped together ran alongside us on the parapet connecting paper mills in Canada with mills on the other side of the river in Minnesota. We traveled so slowly that traffic became a moving social hour. The cars going to Ontario were mostly filled with Minnesota and Iowa fishermen heading out for a weekend on Ontario lakes. People had their car and truck windows down enjoying the seventy-six or so degree mini-climate generated by the mills. Bob chatted with the occupants of several cars going to Ontario as we rolled slowly towards the U.S.

We drew up next to a blue van with Minnesota plates headed for Ontario. There were four people in it. The driver called to Bob, “How was the fishing?”

“Lousy. All the fish have moved to Minnesota.”

All four in the car went into spasms, and we could hear their laughter fade away as our vehicles drew apart. Eventually we got across the bridge, through customs, and into International Falls, Minnesota.

At the edge of town we stopped to shop for odds and ends of hardware for the camper and for wine. We ran out of wine two days ago and there's precious few (read, no) government liquor stores in the Ontario outback. By the time we got done it was five thirty. Our projected campground was a provincial park at Baudette, almost eighty miles down the road. Forget that.

We drove back through International Falls and found the International Voyageur Campground. It was a smart move. The campground is clean and pleasant. I write this in their large laundry room. The walls are an Irish green complimented by a colored leaf border along the top. Bob is doing our laundry and talking sports with the campground owner. I'm seated on a soft bench at a table. My computer is plugged into a dedicated line, not a campground office line. The laundry is open twenty-four seven, and so is access to the phone jack. Best of all, the sun is shining and it's a balmy sixty-two degrees outside.

Icelandic State Park, North Dakota

It was forty-eight degrees when we woke at 6:30 this morning, but quickly warmed to the upper fifties. The sun was shining for the first morning in six days. Hallelujah!

In addition to the usual morning chores: breaking down the bed, setting up the table, breakfast, redding up the camper, and getting the van ready for a day on the road, Bob caught up on some computer work. So it was 10:00 a.m. by the time we left the International Voyageur Campground, took Highway 53 to Highway 11, and turned the van towards North Dakota.

Within a couple of hours we had left the forest wilds for the Midwest Grain Belt. All day we drove through flat Minnesota farm country. Neat prosperous farms filled out the patchwork of fields. Some were green with young grains, in others the black loamy soil was just being turned for planting. The countryside was homey and peaceful. The sun shone all day. The temperature was near seventy degrees.

We came to a two-lane metal-girder bridge across the river between Minnesota and North Dakota, and our lane was blocked off with orange cones. That left just one lane for everyone to use. A small black and white sign read, “Take Turns.”

A car was coming towards us in the one open lane. We politely waited for our turn, then crossed the Red River of the North into North Dakota.

We are camped just twenty miles into North Dakota at Icelandic State Park, as green and neat as the farms around it. There are woods and brush and walking trails, but they are peaceful, domesticated deciduous woods compared to the raw wilds of Ontario.

It's warm, in the low seventies. The first thing we did upon setting up camp was to shed our boots, jeans, and sweatshirts and jump into shorts, t-shirts and sandals. Florida clothes! First time we've had them on in weeks.

Williston, North Dakota

There was no condensation on the windows this morning, no water dripping off them onto our sleeping bags. The glass was clear and filled with sunshine at 6:30 a.m. It was fifty-six degrees outside and inside, but felt warmer. It had to be the sunshine.

There were white pelicans, lots of them, on Ramsey Lake as we drove over its wide earthen dam on the way out of the park. What a surprise! We didn't know pelicans came this far north. We see them on the inland lakes in Florida all the time, but in North Dakota?

Nearer the park gate, we stopped to take a walk around the group of historic buildings at the park's Heritage Center. They weren't open yet, but we peeked in the windows and wished we had time to see the exhibits. However, we had “many miles to go before I sleep” today, so moved on. This is another place to come back to someday.

Prairie farmland flowed by us as we drove across the northern part of North Dakota, close to the Canadian border, for nine hours. Isolated farmsteads were sheltered from winds and snows by tall trees at least on the west and north, sometimes all the way around house and all the outbuildings including barns and silos.

It was a long, relaxed tour of the land. There is almost no traffic on these remote highways. We traveled almost the whole width of North Dakota at fifty miles an hour, enjoying the prairie ambience at a speed where we could really see what we passed. Even though we know that gas prices are right now very high, it looks as if we may have miscalculated how much fuel for this trip would cost-not by a lot, but slower speeds for conservation might be a good idea. We're in no hurry. We've got all summer and lots to see along the way. Alaska isn't going anywhere.

We had hoped to get into Montana today, though, to a town big enough to have a GMC dealer for an oil change, filters replacement, and tire rotation. It didn't look like there was any town big enough in northern North Dakota to have a dealership or any other places to do the jobs. But we ran out of time, and settled on the Buffalo Trail Campground in Williston, North Dakota. We had to drop down from Route 5 to Route 2 to find the campground. Route 5 has no campgrounds on the western two-thirds of its path, and only a few basic campsites in village parks on the eastern third, except for Icelandic Provincial Park.

Williston has turned out to be a rather large town, with all the services we need. Those little dots on the maps for town sizes are, out of necessity, rather general, and you don't know what you get until you arrive.
Tomorrow morning Bob will take the car for the oil change and a wash, while I try to catch up on email.

Malta, Montana

It was sunny, but only fifty degrees this morning, cool enough to want the little heat in the camper to take the chill off. We were out of bed at 6:30 am. By 7:30 Bob was on his way to a GMC dealership down the road for BlueVan's brush-up.

After cleaning up the trailer, I tossed some clothes into a machine in the campground laundry and, computer in hand, went to the office which opened at 8:00 a.m. But it wasn't -or didn't.

The office back door, which led into the rec room side of the office, was also closed. I went back into the laundry building and set up my computer on the big white wooden clothes-folding table. I could write my email in there, then send it whenever the office opened.

The only electrical outlet I found was at the far end of the table. There were four cross-braces between the legs at that end of the table. I told myself, ”Don't hit your leg on those cross-braces.”

I dragged a white plastic chair to the space between the end of the table and the wall, plugged in the computer, sat down, and whacked my leg into a cross-brace.

I worked for a half-hour or so, until the washer stopped. Got up, tossed the clothes into the dryer, checked through the laundry room window on the still-closed and dark rec room, went back to the computer, sat down and whacked my shin on a cross-brace. Twice more, as I got up to check the dryer and the rec room, I smacked my shins on those braces, once right where I had bruised myself Monday when I walked into the trailer hitch. I probably should not be allowed out alone.

After I got the clothes folded, I looked over, and there were lights on in the rec room! So I lugged the folded laundry and the computer over to the rec room because I didn't want to leave the computer alone long enough to take the clothes to the camper.

Bob got back, came into the rec room, and announced he was ready to go. Well, not me. It took another half hour to send and save email. At 11:00 a.m. we pulled out of Buffalo Trails and pointed the van towards Montana, twenty miles away.

Not long after we left Buffalo Trails, eight white woodstorks with their elegant black-tipped wings flew low over us. Like the pelicans, we were amazed to see them this far north. I never saw these birds until I moved to Florida, and I grew up in The North. I must have lived on the wrong flyway.

The passing scene changed from rolling green plains to the taller, browner prairie grasses and craggy-topped steep-sided hills in isolated ranges. When we drove into Culberton, Montana, twenty-two miles over the border, there were prairie grasses spread over the land. When we drove out, the ranges were spotted with sagebrush.

Just out of Glasgow, though, we came to some rather tall green, grassy hills along the highway. The hills on our right were alive - with big-as-life dinosaurs, bears, a tiger, even a huge ant. It looked like they had been made of cement or fiberglass and painted. The shapes were quite crude and primitive, which made them much more interesting than some slick professional job. There was not house nor other building around. There was no sign telling about the sculptor or naming him/them. It was just someone's private art gallery for the entertainment of passers-by.

Scarcely half a mile further, on a higher hill to our left, was an ancient tractor with wide metal wheels, and behind it was a rust-colored equally ancient thresher, both placed as if they were an historical exhibit. Again there was no sign; it was just a creation for travelers to see and enjoy.

At 4:30 p.m. we reached Malta and found a little campground sandwiched between the Evergreen Motel and an old iron bridge over a sluggish brown river. We were grateful for the spot, as it is again ninety miles to the next campground. We were also glad that we got there when we did, as the campground filled up fast. A lot of others knew the next campground is ninety miles away. It was ninety-two degrees, but along the river there were trees, and we were under them.

As we were plugging in the electrical cord, hauling the computer and our raincoats from the car to the camper, and otherwise setting up camp, we had the grand awakening. A train thundered across the bridge not a hundred feet from us. Even shouting, we could hardly hear each other over the clattering rail cars loaded with semi-trailers. A train has roared across the bridge since then every fifteen minutes.

The Evergreen Motel and Campground owner told us the little restaurant across the street had good food and a salad bar. Salad bar were the operant words. Salad was the only food that appealed in the pulsing heat that rose off the treeless prairie in waves. When we got to the restaurant at 5:40 p.m., we found it was only 4:40 p.m. Mountain time had sneaked up on us.

It is now 10:30 and twilight is just creeping in. We're holed up in Little Moby. The roar of the air conditioner almost masks the thunder of railway cars. It could be a long night.

Fort McLeod, Alberta, Canada

The sky was completely overcast this morning. It was a warm night, sixty-four degrees when we woke up, and seventy degrees by 8:30 a.m. There were a few sprinkles of rain as we drove along U.S. 2 in Montana, but by late morning the sun was shining.

Miles and miles of wheat fields, punctuated by grain elevators, spread under the blue skies. I can see why they call Montana the Big Sky Country. The flat countryside stretches to a low horizon, and two-thirds of the landscape scenery is sky. There are some hilly areas; and occasionally a short mountain range breaks up the flat horizon, but mostly the plains and Big Skies prevail.

We saw some fields where the straw was tied up in traditional square bales, the kind you use to decorate for Hallowe'en parties. Most of the hay or straw, though, was in the huge rolls that farmers fancy now. It's the time of year for babies, and calves and colts frolicked in the prairie grasses and sagebrush. One farm we passed had a whole fenced meadow full of llamas, including some furry little ones.

We enjoyed driving through the occasional clusters of dusty clapboard houses, the villages of the plains, always anchored to a grain elevator. This is the nostalgic homeland of farms and country people tied to the soil. Train tracks, hardly seen in the East any more, went through every village past the elevators, and followed our route. Bob called out when he sighted a train coming. We'd watch it come towards us and then guess what was in the cars and containers and where it might be going as it passed, like we did when we were kids.

I pulled into a rest stop in Chester, Montana for lunch. Bob was snoozing, but he woke with the slowing of the car and gazed blearily out the window.

“Great,” he said. “This is great. We can have lunch here.”

Well, that was the idea. There were timbered shelters for the three or four picnic tables, and a similar one for the rest rooms. The small rest area was the work of the Lions Club of Chester, the town of Chester, and the Montana Department of Transportation, so it said on a plaque. The rustic western buildings had a very homemade look to them, as if they had been a group project by the club and townspeople.

There was a small poster on the wall of the restroom building, actually just wall-shielded pit toilets, just above a metal donations box.

Welcome to the ultimate experience in Montana plumbing.
This facility offers you the chance to experience a near-wilderness level outhouse.
No donation: no toilet paper
Small Donation: single ply, slick paper
Large donation: the best paper money can buy.

I put in a dollar and some change. After we got into the car, I found out that Bob had also put in a dollar. At least we paid for our toilet paper.

We stopped in Shelby, Montana, to get the cheaper U.S. gas before going back up into Canada. Our fifty-mile an hour travel is paying off. We're getting three more miles to the gallon than when we were driving faster. Three miles doesn't sound like much, but when you figure it over the thousands of miles we will travel this summer, it's a significant savings.

The scenery changed a little when we drove north into Alberta, Canada. Acres and acres of bright yellow canola, raised for its oil, replaced the green wheat of Montana. Otherwise, the landscape was pretty much the same; the endless land, the peaceful green and gold countryside of the breadbasket of America. At a stoplight in Lethside we were next to a bright purple semi of the Kootenay Company of Alberta. On the back of the tall cab was painted: “Hopelessly lost, but making good time.”

We checked into Daisy May Campground in Fort McLeod at 5:15 p.m., happy to get a campsite. This is the eve of Canada Day, the Canadian Independence Day. It's the first big weekend of summer, and campgrounds are usually packed. We were happy, that is, until our site was pointed out to us. This campground had no drive-thru sites left. That meant the trailer had to be backed into the site. In some cases, this is not a problem.

But the site that was pointed out to us was between a shed and another camper, very narrow, across the entry road, and at a sharp angle from where we were parked in front of the campground office. A couple was sitting at the picnic table of the neighboring campsite playing cribbage and drinking Pepsi. Bob had to fit the camper in between their picnic table and our picnic table, which was next to the shed, without hitting them or any parts of the scenery. It was going to be tricky. The worst part was that the cribbage players would be an audience to our efforts. That ups the stress level eighty per cent, right there.

I climbed out of the van to direct, and Bob put the van in reverse with a complete lack of confidence in both my directing and his backing. Twice he started to back up and had to stop and wait for pickup trucks that came by on the road. Then the fellow at the picnic table jumped up to move his truck out of the way. We waited for him to do that. None of this added to the state of our nerves. I could just tell from Bob's face that he was really uptight. I wasn't too relaxed, myself.

Finally the way was clear. Bob hit the gas, spun the wheel, and jackknifed the camper totally away from the campsite. I waved my arms. The cribbage players watched with interest. Bob began to pull forward for another pass when a fellow with grey bushy hair popped out of nowhere and said to Bob, “Want me to back it in for you? I do it all the time.”

Bob couldn't get out of that van fast enough. The fellow hopped in and smoothly backed Little Moby into the site in one try. What would have taken us twenty embarrassing minutes, he did in two. We showered him with thanks. “I do it all the time,” he said again, and left.

“Too bad,” said the fellow playing cribbage at the picnic table. “You didn't get a chance to yell at each other.”

He had that right. He'd been there.

The fellow who had backed in Little Moby? He was the owner of the campground. He does it all the time.

Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada

As Bob was unhooking Little Moby's umbilical cords this morning, our neighbor asked where we were going.

“Alaska,” Bob told him.

"Oh, oh,” said the fellow. “The Alaska Highway is closed. They've got big fires in the Yukon.”

When I came back to the camper from brushing my teeth, all ready to head onward and northward, Bob popped the good news on me.

“…and he said the smoke is so bad they can't even get planes in.”

What to do?

We decided to keep driving north and see what happens. It sure did put a damper on the otherwise warm and sunny morning.

Like the dinosaur hill, people's sense of history, humor, and patriotism make bright spots along the way. There's a lot of oil in Alberta, and the landscape is often dotted with grasshopper pumps, bobbling slowly up and down forever. One pump we passed this morning was the work of an anonymous artist. The pump arm and head were faced with a painted cutout of a bronco rider, designed so the arm became the horse's body and the pump head was the foaming head of the wild mustang. The rider went up and down, up and down, on the pump arm, waving his Stetson in the air and grinning at travelers going by. We grinned back.

It's 7:48 p.m. and raining again. We had a beautiful sunny, warm day for the drive, but thundershowers moved in when we got to the Wetaskiwin Lions Club RV Park, and left a light drizzle that looks like it's an all-nighter.

Because of the Canada Day holiday, there were no sites with hookups left. We were just glad to find a place to roost for the night, so are in a meadow that is used as an overflow. Bob is back at the camper reading by a Coleman lantern. I'm here in the campground arcade game room where there's light, a table, and an outlet for the computer. But there's no phone line. No one's in here but the video game machines and I, so it's pretty much quiet. Just every now and then Terminator 2 fires two shots at something, which makes me jump; and every three or four minutes Gilligan's island plays eight notes of music. I don't mind Gilligan so much, but I'm about to pull the plug on the Terminator.

In order to send this mail, I'm going to have to put on my raincoat, put up my umbrella, and lug the computer over to the tiny campground office. The gal will hand me a phone line across the counter, and I'll set up on a corner of the counter and try to be out of the way as much as possible while sending and receiving my mail. Life is tough.

Valley View, Alberta, Canada

The vast fields of the grain belt gave way to smaller farms as we traveled more to the northwest in Alberta today. Farmsteads were closer together, as were towns. When we were on Route 43 past Edmonton, the farms faded away into forests. We were back among the pointed pines, beaver ponds, and clear rushing streams. It was home-type country again, right down to the moose crossing signs. Home country for summer visits, that is. We gave up living in the North for Florida sunshine almost twenty years ago.

In addition to the usual black and yellow signs with moose silhouettes and “Night Danger” painted on them, there are life-sized wooden moose cutouts placed at the edge of the highway, probably where heavily used animal trails meet the road. They are dark gold-colored, and believable enough to startle you at first glance in the daylight. At night hundreds of motorists must slam on their brakes when the shiny moose leaps into their headlights. It would certainly make you moose-aware-if you survived the shock.

There are other signs, too. One has a large moose painted on the top of the sign. Below the moose it reads:

MOOSE ROW
Protect our wild life -
Protect yourself.

Now that'll scare you into thinking moose every minute!

Our colleagues along this northern way are another source of entertainment added to reading moose crossing signs and looking for beavers. Alberta Route 43 is the chute for travelers from all directions to Dawson Creek, Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway. So a good share of the traffic, such as it is, is going where we're going.

We read the license plates and bumper stickers and marvel at sights like the six-cylinder minivan hauling a huge trailer, 2,000 miles already from Québec and 1,000 miles to go. A truck camper passed us with a man, woman, and large hound all in the cab seat together. It was hard to tell who was driving. An old brown van chugged along with homemade curtains covering all the windows except the driver's and the windshield.

Our biggest thrill of the day was on a four-lane section of the highway. We were alone traveling the right lane of the two northbound lanes, just us, the forest, and the moose, in the whole world. A white van camper came up suddenly behind us, pulled over into the wide shoulder and rumbled past us on the rumble strips on our right, pulled back into the right-hand lane in front of us and disappeared into the distance. We're still boggled. It was a white Trailmaster conversion camper on a GMC Savana chassis. If you see it, stay out of its way.

Tonight we're in a nice clean little campground tucked away in the forest, Sherk's RV Park near ValleyView. An early arrival got us a pull-through site. We have electricity, water, and sewer hookups, and we have rain. For the third night in a row, we have rain. But who's complaining? It's dry and cozy in Little Moby. It's also about time for my nightly glass of wine-burgundy tonight-followed by a swan dive into my fluffy sleeping bag.

Valley View, Alberta, Canada

We woke up to rain, went back to sleep and woke up to rain. Not just rain, sheets of rain. It wasn't hard to decide not to go anywhere today. We went back to sleep again. Sherk's RV Park had us for another night.
Once we finally hauled ourselves out of those warm sleeping bags, I spent most of the day on the computer, catching up on a lot of mail and busywork. I made two trips over to the office to plug into their fax line and send, receive, and upload at ten cents a minute.

We did get in a forty-five minute trail walk in a misty interval between outright downpours, but otherwise spent the day inside Little Moby where it was warm and dry. It hovered at fifty degrees, just not a nice day.
Tomorrow is supposed to be better.