Glasgow, Montana to Caron, Saskatchewan – 311 miles
The sky
was clear when we awoke, a welcome change after the rain yesterday
evening. We lucked out, however, as the
forecast for this area that we saw as we were leaving Dickinson yesterday
morning mentioned severe thunderstorms with hail in the afternoon. Fortunately, that didn't come to pass and all
we got was a gentle rainfall while we were doing the laundry and taking a
shower at the campground. It did have
one interesting after-affect though — as the sun moved higher in the sky while
we were eating breakfast this morning, the temperature started warming up and
we looked out the window to notice that it was suddenly foggy. The fog only lasted a few moments, and was gone
as quickly as it appeared. The only
thing I can figure out is that as last night’s moisture on the wet ground began
to evaporate, at the same time the temperature was rising through the dew
point, and for that brief period the rising moisture condensed into fog. As the temperature rose above the dew point,
the fog dissipated and again it was clear all around.
After
filling up the gas tank with cheap (relatively speaking) American gasoline, we
were off for the Canadian border. We
first headed west to Malta, Montana, then turned due north across the prairie
for 40 miles, crossing into Canada at the small and infrequently used port of
entry labeled as Monchy on the map.
There was no other activity or vehicles, either coming into the US or
entering Canada; in fact, the Canadian side seemed to be manned by a solitary
jovial agent who passed us through after a brief round of the usual questions
about where we were headed, did we have any fresh fruits or vegetables, did we
have any firearms, or did we have more than $10,000 cash — yeah, right!
Provincial
Highway 4 was almost a straight shot into Swift Current, Saskatchewan, a
distance of roughly 90 miles. The first
half of that was on a narrow, two lane road with badly broken pavement, making
for a rough ride. It was worse than any
of the roads we drove in Alaska three years ago — at least the paved
roads. But judging by the traffic along
the stretch (one car passed us heading north and a lone pickup truck heading
south), the usage doesn’t make maintenance a high priority. Upon reaching the small crossroads settlement
of Cadillac, the road improved considerably the rest of the way into Swift
Current, a town of 15,000 located on the Trans Canada Highway. We stopped for lunch at a sports bar called
Original Joe’s, where I had a batch of chicken fingers with about a thousand
French fries and Jeanette had a tequila lime chicken plate while we watched an
exciting round of axe throwing and chainsaw sawing at a lumberjack contest on
TV. We both had enough food left over to
take with us for supper tonight.
Our
original plan was to stay and spend the night somewhere right around Swift
Current, but since it was still early in the day, we decided to move on east
for a while so we jumped up onto the Trans Canada Highway for another hundred
miles or so. Meanwhile, it had gotten
cloudy and misty again, so we started looking for a place to stop for the
night. Jeanette found a place called
Besant Campground near the dot on the map labeled Caron, so we pulled in there
and signed up for a spot with an electrical hook-up so we could use our little
portable electric heater to keep us warm and toasty. As we drove up to our campsite, there were
several other rigs parked and hooked up, but no sign of any other people. We took a walk around the campground after
dinner, and there must have been thirty or forty other rigs scattered around — motorhomes,
travel trailers, fifth-wheels, and even a couple of tents — all fresh and new, with firewood stacked nearby, but no people, It was eerie, like a modern-day ghost
town. The only thing we could figure is
that they were seasonal retreats. We saw
a lot of these back east — instead of a cabin at the lake or in the mountains,
people rent a campsite for the season and park their RVs there, coming out for
weekends. Caron is about an hour west of
Moose Jaw and an hour-and-a-half west of Regina, so I guess all the people were
back in the city on this Monday in May.
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