Four months of nice weather.

That's all you get up here in the great white north of Canada. June, July, August, and September. Sure, you might get a couple of nice days in May and October, but really there's only four months that you can sort of count on.

Arriving here in April is most certainly too early!

Yesterday, we drove 476 miles (760 kms) from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

We knew we were in for a long driving day, so we got an early start. It was around 8:30am when we said goodbye to our couchsurfing host and her dog Sammy. Thanks for having us Debra!

Debra, Sammy, Ruth, and Kevin.

It was cold and windy, and pouring rain. The first two or three hours of our drive looked something like this...

Turn right in 274 miles!

The sign coming up to the town of Rugby, North Dakota says "The Geographical Center of North America". So we figured we had better stop for a photo op...

Rugby, North Dakota's claim to fame!

Not sure who did the math to figure out the geographical center of North America, but I guess when you look at the map, they're pretty close...

The middle of North America.

Somewhere in North Dakota.

Somewhere else in North Dakota.

The Canadian border.

Made it to the border at 2:30pm. Crossed the border, and it became 1:30pm! We gained an hour because Saskatchewan doesn't recognize daylight savings time.

The Canadian border guard asked us all of the usual questions. Including asking if we had done any vehicle repairs while in the states. When it came to booze, we had two opened 5 litre boxes of wine that we explained were about half full. Maybe a little exaggeration. Probably slightly more than half full. Also, our couchsurfing friends in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan had given us a bottle of their homemade wine, so we were over limit by quite a bit. But we were well under our purchase limit, and we weren't bringing in cigarettes, so he sent us on our way without any issue. Nice!

Oil, mining, and agriculture. Saskatchewan is booming!

Welcome to Canada. Hmph.

One for you, Sam.

Apparently the snow was totally gone when they had this big storm blow through and it dumped a bunch of wet white stuff just hours before we came through. You can see in the pics above that it was enough that they had to get the plow out on the highway. Yuck.

We pulled into Wendy and Phil's in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan at around 5:00pm, just as we planned. You might remember that we stayed with them last year at this time on our way up to Sturgeon Lake, and they had come to visit us there in their class B van for a few days as well. 

Wendy's daughter is visiting too, and she made us all a delicious dinner.

We got an email from Cabri Regional Park saying not to rush, and that we should arrive on Wednesday. It's only about a two and a half hour drive, so now we have a surprise day to relax. So we're going to stay in Moose Jaw one more night and head to Cabri tomorrow. Really excited to see where we're going to spend the next five months!

Yesterday's drive, 476 miles (760 kms).