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Published: August 26th 2011
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As we descended down from Cypress Hills Provincial Park, we crossed the border into Saskatchewan... and onto a hunting trail. Outside the park boundary we were met with what appeared to be endless fields. It was incredible! The road ahead travelled straight towards the horizon, with a few small knolls between us and the ‘end of the earth’ as I started to call it. Following dirt roads for what felt like hours, we ended up back on bitumen outside a town called Consul. We noticed that most vehicles were heading towards the outskirts of town where there were a few large festival type tents set up. A rodeo!!!
Talking to the lady on the gate, who happened to be Linda Brown, the Mayor of Consul, we were sold on the idea of staying for the rodeo festivities and into the evening for the country band (she also tried to convince us to check out the tourists sights in town – a mural and a gas station that ‘may’ be open where we could buy postcards – we weren’t so sold on that idea). We rodeod it up, sneaking premixed drinks into the grandstands to avoid any crazy costs (drinks ended
up being a whopping $3.75!).
I should probably explain here a few things that were going on at this time. First of all, the temperature soared to over 30°C once we reached Dinosaur Provincial Park with clear skies. It only got warmer, much to our enjoyment. Because it was also still the middle of summer at this point, the sun still wasn’t setting until around 9pm. However, as the sun got closer to setting (and even during the days) we were confronted with a Canadian phenomenon.... small biting flies and mozzies. Now I come from the land of spiders, snakes, bugs and mozzies, but seriously, these Canadian buggers are a fierce force – with only 4 months of weather appropriate for flying and breeding, they are flat out, on a feeding and breeding FRENZY. I have never seen anything like it in my life!
The next day, with slightly sore heads, ringing ears and virtually no drinking water on board (and a stinging bum for me – a bumblebee stung me twice!), we headed back onto the road towards Grasslands National Park. By the time we reached the parks info centre at Val Marie, the temperature hit over
40°C, I was suffering a case of homesickness after searching the familiar looking grassy fields we had been passing for kangaroos (no success) and we were in serious need for a coffee. Thankfully, the local museum served iced coffees, brownies, cookies and internet. We decided to stay in town a night (local campground $12/night, showers included) and go out on date night to the local movie theatre to see Pirates of the Caribbean 4 ($17, including 2 ‘pops’, popcorn and a bag of candy).
Ok I will admit here, yes the prairies can be boring. But Grasslands National Park was INCREDIBLE! This park protects one of the largest stretches of native prairie land remaining in North America. Fantastic scenic landscape, different coloured grasses, coulees, tipi rings, saltpans, grass covered tablelands, cacti... We never saw any Pronghorn Antelope, despite being told we would see them everywhere and we didn’t see any Bison – there is a huge Bison reintroduction program at Grasslands- though we were told we wouldn’t see them anyway. We did however see the most hilarious colonies of Prairie Dogs (see photo). Camping the night and watching the sunset over a stunning coulee landscape, neighbour brought us some
leftover watermelon and warned us that the ‘mosquitoes are brutal here!’. Instead we covered up, sprayed ourselves with DEET and headed out to go spotlighting for Ferrets (other reintroduced rare species) and Burrowing Owls at the closest Prairie Dog colony. In hindsight, we should have listened to our neighbour. As we sat INSIDE the car watching a White-Tailed Deer cross the plain, we could hear the mozzies coming for us like the roaring buzz of bees near a bee hive. Needless to say, we lasted all of 2 minutes spotlighting, jumped back into the van and decided to have an early night!
We explored the 70 mile butte part of the park - Brad searched for lizards and fossils... while I hiked the loop trail for a very pleasant view across the national park and surrounding farmland toward the border. We crossed the border into the USA at Montana with few problems – surrendering a lime, asking for a passport stamp with weird looks in return, confessing to possessing a WW1 bayonet knife – in fact the US customs guys offered driving and road advice.
Passing the border into the US we noticed a few things changed. Fuel
went from costing at least $1.24/L down to between $0.85-0.95/L (once we’d done the confusing translation from American gallons to litres), which was a price I never thought I’d pay again in my life. I guess that’s why 9 out of 10 people in Montana and North Dakota can afford to drive a gigantic V8 truck! The price of food also dropped. Fruit and vegetable prices were similar (for the record Banana’s were still $0.79/lb so my banana eating frenzy continued), the price of junk food halved or less, Oreo packets were at least $2 cheaper, Mexican food items were as ‘cheap as borscht’ as Bryan Watts would say... and the amount of sugar in cereal doubled. Oh and they didn’t sell Clamato juice (who’d think that Canadians are the only people crazy enough to sell tomato juice laced with calm nectar?) so no Caesars for a few days. The quality of buildings, particularly the toilets and motel buildings halved as well – we stayed in a very spesh campground one night!
While we tried our best to enjoy the scenery and the differences across the states, we were seriously hightailing it east across the number 2 highway, crossing
a timezone a day. We stopped at Rugby, North Dakota (the geographic centre of North America – though it took a about 15 minutes to find it and take a photo). We camped near a lovely lake (free showers) near the border of North Dakota and Minnesota. Halfway across Minnesota, we crossed the top of the Mississippi River catchment and stopped for pie and real soy espresso based coffee (almost as good as an Australian flat white) in a very beautiful town. We crossed into Wisconsin and stopped an hour and a half later almost on the Michigan border (it was across the road) to cook supper. Once in Michigan, we free camped the night at a boat ramp on a lake. We woke to discover the municipal campground not even 50 metres behind us!
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan state turned out to be quite lovely and scenic. We stopped for a swim at a beautiful and almost people-free beach along Lake Superior. It was bizarre to look out across the large expanse of water that so closely resembled an ocean, yet see no waves and taste freshwater when we were swimming. Finally (it was a bit of
a finally for me), we crossed back across into Canada at Sault (pronounced ‘Soo’) Saint Marie... Ontario!
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