Before you start saying how did they get from Colorado to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada so fast, let me say that we have been through parts of the US and Canada that have not been inhabited since The Lewis and Clark Expedition--well sort of. We stayed in one place just above the border that had no TV stations, no satellite signal, and no cell service. In all our travels we have not had a situation like that before. The satellite service was interrupted by the only dang tree in the entire region, and we were assigned to dock The Love Boat next to it. Geez. Deb's mom had never heard of the town before even though it is Saskatchewan. The town's name was Oungre, SK. The town's motto should be (when they get more than 5 people in the town) "Come here and get away from all those nasty electronic devices". Holy moly. Maybe I should tell you a little about where we are at and then about how we got here.
In case you didn't catch it the first time, we are in Saskatoon, SK. This city has a population of about 250,000 people which is about 60% the size of Raleighwood. And no I didn't fact check that last statement and anyone that does will be given a 2 month vacation in Oungre, SK as my personal thanks. We are in a fairly nice campground about 5 miles from Deb's parents. When we left Oungre we stopped in Regina, SK (pronounced re jina not re gina) for fuel. I went into the store to pay for fuel because the stupid pump outside discriminated against Amerikan credit cards. Amerikans being people from the USA. So I walked up the line at the register and the people in the line stopped and looked me over like I was a celebrity or something. The gawking went on for an uncomfortably long time. An evil thought went though my mind as I started to tell them that they had in fact discovered a celebrity and my name is Harry B Hind and my band, The Big Old Dumb Southern Boys, and my manager were in the motorhome. The two little band members with the long hair worked in a rock hair band and never cut their hair and they sang like howling dogs but they played gitars real good. So I don't let them sang too much. And if the locals wanted to come see us play for free they should go up to my manager, the one with the big boobs, and give her the secret saying indicting they were members of my fan club, and she would give them free tickets to the poopy palace I was playing that night. The secret password being, "I love Harry B. Hind and Big Ole Dumb Southern Boys rock". I actually did think. I could just see those idjits walking up to Deb and saying the secret phrase. I guarantee the band members would have sang for them.
We went through a town on the way up called Willston, ND that was amazing. The town was bursting at the seams due to the oil business. We saw several new housing projects that consisted of nothing more than FEMA style trailers lined up in rows making huge trailer parks. A FEMA style trailer are meant for no frills, temporary housing and these trailers had nothing to do with FEMA. . The definition of temporary is subjective. There were many of these parks there with exactly the same trailers all lined up in neat rows in a village of hundreds of trailers. The trailers and mobile home villages were meant to house the oil industry workers that lived there to work. Before we got to Willston the traffic on the highway was most non-existent then suddenly we came into a sea of semi trucks, dump trucks, welding trucks, and pickup trucks all in support of the oil industry. You have to realize this town was a very long distance from another town. In addition, the cost of things rose accordingly because the businesses were having difficulty finding people for jobs. The one price rise that I noticed very quickly was the cost of gasoline and diesel jumping up 50 cents a gallon from just 100 miles away. We saw a sea of oil pumps and tanks everywhere. And every moving vehicle was muddy except ours which changed immediately.
The Love Boat and Crapper (motorhome and car) are covered in mud. I don't mean dirt I mean mud. I got onto the roof to check for damage from the storm (I will explain that shortly) and the roof was covered in mud. The mud came from 2 places. The rain was spotty and dirt from the blowing sand from trucks pulling off on onto dirt roads was tremendous. I mean clouds of dirt that stuck to a wet RV like glue. The other source was the road construction that was going on to support the oil industry. Entire sections of US85 were torn apart for miles and miles. I mean both lanes of a 2 lane road or rather a single lane road. The heavy machinery had the place an entire mess. We drove through mud and mud was slung onto the motorhome by heavy machinery and passing dumptrucks. Geez what a mess. In Canada the sand from the winter road maintenance made more mud that traffic slung onto us. Okay, you get the picture, everything is a mess.
In Oungre, we had a storm land on us. The storm brought a few inches of water that left mud and huge, huge pools of standing water in the campground. I do mean huge. What wasn't underwater was a thick layer of mud. I thought we were going to get stuck trying to get out. I really was worried. To make matters worse the storm brought hail that thoroughly blasted the car and motorhome. It punched holes in the slide-out awnings on The Love Boat. I am sure there was other damage but everything is so covered in mud that I can't see it just yet.
I have whined enough. I will update the blog with Mt Rushmore and Deadwood, SD entries in the next few days. Stay out of the hail. See yall later. Oh, I forgot to mention that we went through many places where The Lewis and Clark Expedition traveled. Too cool.
Al
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