Off to Manitoba!!

We did indeed leave about 3 p.m.   on Wednesday and got to Escanaba as planned and parked in the mall parking near a McDonald’s – it was kind of blizzard on the way there with poor visibility so we were glad to stop there and then knew that it would only be another ½ hour to Greg Janders house to load up the ton of dog meat we had bought.

Up at 8:30 (4 of the pups had never been on the dog truck overnight so it was good to know that they were quiet until we wanted to get up!!!!) and over to Mickey D’s for breakfast – we knew that Greg wouldn’t be there when we picked up the meat so he had left it out on the dock for us to load.  So many buckets of meat later we were on the road again!!!

We got as far as Deer River MN to stop for the nite but not without fiding out that the tortuous roads of Wisconsin (frost heaves) had played havoc with the contents of our trailer!!!  The tower of fruit packing boxes that we got from the younger DeKuiper family that I was using as 4 shelves and that Randy had secured to the walls with screws were on the floor along with all of their contents!!!!!!!!!!!!! I looked at it and said “that’s an hour of work……………”  Finally got that all picked up and was sooooooo thankful that our pill containers (each holding about 300 pills!!!!!!!) DID NOT open and scatter all over the place!!!!!!!!! That would have been an event of disastrous proportions and worthy of some “slang” words!!

Went to dinner to a little bar in Deeer River where there were some very friendly and funny Minnesotans!!  Not much on the menu – Randy ordered a burger and said it was the plainest burger he’s ever gotten – and I got 3 egg rolls that were quite good!!! The patrons were happy to meet out=of=towners and even one teased me by saying he had just gotten out of jail…………..which of course he had not……….

Up early to find that there was a major snowstorm predicted for the area we were about to travel through!  We did hit a patch of ice coming to a stop sign which changed our route because I didn’t want Randy to try and turn while we were sliding………..believe me………….a 52 foot rig sliding is not peaceful……………..so we went a different way where it may have been a bit bumpier but lots less traffic! And maybe a big longer drive – it’s also not easy to find a place to turn the rig around once you have missed a corner!!!!

No problems going through the border – except the US had us stop before we left the US and then we had to stop again at the Canadian customs – both places had very friendly women agents and gave us no problem!!! 

As we entered Canada we experienced more blizzarding and more icy roads but made it to Vita, Manitoba at 3p – we looked and looked for the race start but couldn’t really see anything that looked remotely like it so then parked at the curling rink (my first time at a curling rink and will take pictures – the building is 50 years old and they are having trouble finding young people to carry on the “curling  tradition”) The driver’s meeting is there tonite and we are parked 40 feet from the building with bathrooms and warm water for dogs to boot!!!!!

They are already talking about making this a one day race because of the big storm so I guess we will see tonite!!