Day 6

Checking in from Regina Saskatchewan today. I woke up this morning and once again donned my travelling pants in preparation for another twelve hour drive. Leaving Minneapolis today and seeing it in the daylight made me wish I had a day with a bicycle to explore the city. It had some really nice buildings and infrastructure. Driving in last night I also noticed that the river I crossed just before entering the city would be really nice during the day.

I MIGHT have missed my exit while taking this picture.

After 5 days, I finally got a real change of scenery. I almost missed it at first, but then I saw a herd of Buffalo and realized that I was entering the wild west. North Dakota is definitely one of the most interesting states in terms of scenery that I have visited. A majority of my drive through ND gave me views of rolling hills, ageing farms and quaint villages, interspersed by creeks and lakes. I would have loved to stop and explore some of the towns along the way, but I didn't have time.

Somewhere along the way through North Dakota, I had a first: I stopped and picked up a hitchhiker. I didn't get his name, so lets call him Hobo Jim. Hobo Jim was an oil worker. He told me all about the oil drilling industry in the US, and how much money you can make working in the field. Did you know that North Dakota produces more oil than Saudi Arabia? He told me all about jumping trains, and asked about the quality and quantity of women in Vancouver. I dropped him off at the intersection of 200 and I-52, and drove off. I hope he made it to his destination...

I stopped for gas in a smallish town, and asked for directions to a grocery store so I could buy some lunch. The lady directed me to a Walmart 'Super Store'. I wasn't kidding when I said it was a fairly small town, but this Walmart must have been the size of three entire Costco stores from back home. I'm bad at guesstimating areas, but the interior must have been at least 2 acres.

One thing I did notice as I got further North, is that there were a lot of hill-billy residences. Lots of trucks up on blocks in front of run-down shacks. Piles of garbage, etc etc. That part wasn't as pretty. All that disappeared after crossing the border back into Canada (with the exception of the entire city of Estevan... that place is a real dump).

I was a little bit sad to leave the states. Mainly because gas is MUCH cheaper there than in Canada. The lowest price I saw was $3.80/gallon. Most guys know the conversion between litres and gallons because there isn't much else to look at while standing at the urinal, so for the ladies – that's about $1.00/litre.

Now that I have seen the prairies, I can confirm that they are indeed quite flat. Since they are very flat, every little dip collects all the water from miles around, so what you end up with is a lot of grass, and a lot of huge puddles. I have no idea how many stick around during the summer, or to what extent, but my guess is that they could be PRIME kitesurfing slicks. I wonder how many people have tried that...

These are just some puddles.

So, after a full day of scenery changes I ended up in Regina. Regina is pretty much a big city in the middle of a huge grass field. You can see it from 20km away on the highway. I was expecting it to be small and boring, but its actually quite a nice city. Apparently everyone for miles comes to Regina in their souped up cars to party it up on a Friday night.

So that was my day! Surprisingly full of interesting (to me at least) sights and experiences. Tune in next time to hear about my drive to Calgary!