June 21.  The longest day of the year.  (Actually it’s the same 24 hour length as all the others so I’m not sure why it gets undue credit for being the longest.)  It’s 11 p.m. in Watson Lake, Yukon Territory,  and the sun is thinking about setting, though I’m not at all sure it will.  I woke this morning at 4 a.m. and the sun was up.  This “Land of the Midnight Sun” stuff makes for a long day.  Nevertheless, since you bothered to show up to read the blog, I’ll write something, pull the shades and try to go to sleep.  Sol will set or not without my observance and at this point I don’t care.

I wish I wasn’t so tired because there really is a lot to write about today’s leg of the Great Alaska Adventure.  Where do I start?

I suppose the first question everyone asks these days is, “Did he have pie.”  Well, no.  Not today.  But I did find a bakery in the middle of Nowhere British Columbia along the Alaska Highway that offered up the finest, hot, dripping 10,000 calorie cinnamon bun you could imagine.  The folks at Tetsa River Outfitters have been making these buns at this location for three generations. I think they’ve got it about right.  It was only an hour and a half after breakfast, so I only had one.  Next to pie (of any kind) this is a great way to start the day.

The ride?  Oh yeah.  We finally got into some real mountains.  The northern Rockies of British Columbia.  Now they’re not the  size or the riding challenge of the Colorado Rockies I rode last August with brother Jon and then with the Twisted Riders.  But the weather was great and the roads were fun, even at Grandma Marilyn speed.  Along the way through this immense fenceless zoo with endless trees and roaring rivers, we saw another moose (this one hip deep in a pond), several black bears, dozens of bison, several flocks of Stone Sheep, and a bald eagle that we raced for several seconds before he landed in the very top of an emaciated pine tree next to the road.  This was clearly the best ride we’ve had so far this trip and I know it will get even better as we head further west and north into Alaska.

One of the roadside attractions I discovered when I researched the route for the Great Alaska Adventure was the Liard Hot Springs.  (Yes it’s Liard, not Laird).  Sitting in the springs was on my GAA “to do” list.  And today I checked it off.  It’s at a BC provincial park about 120 miles from Watson Lake (today’s destination).  A quick right turn off the Alaska Highway, then $10 to the park official at the gate.  That princely sum included admission to the park and a promise to guard the bikes while we soaked road-weary bones.  Seemed like a good deal to me.  A short walk to the springs, change into my trunks and I had my own slightly sulphered hot tub.  Crystal clear water.  About 105 degrees.  20 minutes of bliss.  Then back on the road to finish the day’s ride.

All had gone well to that point.  Then, about 50 miles before we crossed into Yukon Territory and 100 miles before we finished for the day, we entered “The Construction Zone.”  (Not exactly like the Twilight Zone but there are eerie similarities.)  Chip Sealing Ahead, the sign said.  For the next 16 kilometers.  (About nine miles for you non-metric American provincials.)  I was impressed with what a good job they had done for the first five miles.  Than I spotted the friendly flagwoman with a big red STOP sign.  We were first in line, so we chatted.  Turns out the first five miles hadn’t been done yet.  They were starting at the other end.  And we had a 15 minute wait for the Pilot Car to return.  Finally, the pilot car returned, the pilot relieved herself by the side of the road, and we were off through the Great Chip Seal Adventure.  Chip Seal, as some of you may know, starts out as pretty much rock and dirt spread out over a little oil on the road then compressed with heavy highway equipment until it resembles asphalt.  But the process requires vehicles, including motorcycles piloted by a 60-something grandmother who hates to ride on gravel, to negotiate several miles of loose gravel and dirt, much of which swirled though the air as trucks, tractors, graders, and other highway mechanical monsters try to make it stay in place by the odd method of seeming to throw it everywhere.  But we got through.  The dust cleared.  The road smoothed and we had clear sailing to Watson Lake, I thought naively. 

Yeah, right.  About another 25 miles down the road, the sign said “Chip Sealing Next 30 Kilometers.”  Except this time they were only doing spots of chip sealing.   They’d lay down about 100 yards, skip 200, then lay down another 100.  But the highway crews were done with their part of the work and it was up to the unpaid traveling public to apparently complete the final phase of this public works boondoggle and try to seal the remaining loose gravel to the road and rid the surface of residual dust by throwing it high into the air where the zephyrs would do their part by spreading the dust cloud to the horizon and beyond.  At least we could actually drive on this section at about 50 mph, so, I thought, this won’t be too bad.  And then the first 18 wheeler coming the opposite direction roared by (at well above 50 mph, I might add) and kicked up a dust and gravel storm that obscured our vision and pelted our bikes and our selves indiscriminately painfully sharp pieces of small stones.  20 miles of this.  And RVs were almost as bad as the 18 wheelers at throwing gravel our way.  Still, despite the gravel gauntlet, we made it to Yukon Territory and Watson Lake, about 11 hours after we left Fort Nelson.  I was not amused, you can imagine, when I checked for damage and discovered that the right spot light on the Ultra Classic had been shattered by one of the gravel bullets.  Oh well, at least with the sun staying up all day, I won’t really need the light.

It wouldn’t be an adventure, I guess, if a small dose of daily poop didn’t accompany the ride.

Tomorrow:  On to Whitehorse (pop 25K), capital of Yukon Territory, and another Play Day to lick our wounds, wash our laundry and see what lays in store for the Great Alaska Adventurers.

Each day on the road brings a new challenge, it seems, and today’s challenge was once again related to communication.  About a week into the Great Alaska Adventure, a small plastic piece which keeps the communication cord snuggly connected to the helmet broke on Marilyn’s helmet.  I plugged the cord in and taped it to the helmet and that fix worked fine.  Until today.  At some point about 200 miles up the Alaska Highway, I tried to talk to Marilyn and got no response.  I indicated I couldn’t communicate and she pulled alongside to show me that her CB/Communication cord was gone.  I pulled to the side of the road and discovered that not only had the tape come loose and the cord fallen, but it had gotten caught in the rear sprocket and shredded.  The upper portion and half of the lower portion of the cord were road junk somewhere on the highway.  I made some calls when we got to our Ft. Nelson motel and, after several conversations, was finally able to order the necessary parts from J&M Audio (mounting bracket, upper cord, lower cord) and have them shipped to Alaska Leather in Anchorage where I’ll pick them up a week from tomorrow.  In the meantime,  we’ll communicate the old fashioned way.  (No, not screaming at each other.  With hand signals.)  

Other than that, the ride was good.  Took a small detour early in the route to cover some original section of road that’s no longer used much but still has an original curved all-wood bridge originally built in 1942.  Definitely worth the few extra miles to see and ride across that remarkable structure.  Much of the ride today was through flat forested land, but there were a couple of occasions where we dove down one side of a valley, crossed the river below, then putted up the other side.  Not terribly challenging, especially at Marilyn’s preferred speed, but a nice ride and a taste of things to come.  The road surface today was mixed, with about 150 miles being fairly rough and bumpy and the other 150 relatively new and smooth.  Along the way, I saw my first Canadian moose (a cow), a small black bear, and a coyote edging toward a roadkill deer.  Also saw continued evidence of the effects of global warming in the form of thousands of dead pine trees, killed by the warm-weather supercharged pine beetle.  I’ve seen the same thing in Glacier National Park and in the Colorado Rockies.  And I think the worst is yet to come when we go through Banff in the southern Canadian Rockies.

On a happier note, I had a really huge piece of hot Dutch Apple Pie at a restaurant called The Shepherd’s Inn.  I think 9:30 a.m. is the official Canadian time for a pie break, so I honored their traditions.  I got to see the whole pie before they cut out my slice.  It was a thing of beauty and joy forever.

Once I dealt with the CB cord issue, we went to a local museum–The Fort Nelson Heritage Museum–I had read about and that piqued my interest.  Turned out to be both better and worse than I expected.  On the bad side, it wasn’t a museum that told a particular story.  Rather, like many local museum it was a collection of random and seemingly unrelated artifacts, many of which were local but not all.  They were loosely grouped into categories (e.g. telephone service, medical tools, trapping, etc) and overhanging all the pieces in the collection (literally overhanging) was a taxidermy collection that included various horned ungulates, feathered fliers and finned swimmers. Clearly the museum folks had done a lot of collecting, but little interpretation and story telling. And all that was inside a small building.  On the outside were various pieces of roadbuilding equipment, logging machinery, drilling rigs, and assorted mechanical mysteries.  In short, the outside looked like the inside.  

But as I walked through the grounds I went into a shed that held more than a dozen restored antique automobiles and one 1942 Harley Davidson.  And there I met Merl.  Merl is the curator, collector, preserver, conserver and owner of much of the collection.  And he was a treat to meet.  Merl is 81 and has been collecting since his early twenties.  About 40 years ago he had a massive beard and at a fund-raiser for the museum he auctioned it off for $10,000, which was the financial foundation for the Fort Nelson Heritage Museum.  Merl clearly had a passion for his cars and for the museum collection.  About three years ago Merl drove one of his cars, a 1908 Buick to Whitehorse and back in six days–a roundtrip of 1,200 miles. By the end of our visit I realized that in some ways, the aggregate collection of the museum materials was a reflection of  a community that has struggled to find its identity and Merl who is the heart and soul of the museum.  All in all, it was a good two hours spent learning a little more about a community from a man who knew so much.

Tomorrow we’re off to Watson Lake.

About three weeks ago, I sat on my bike in Key West in front of Mile Marker Zero, the southernmost point in the United States.  

Today, about 4,200 miles later I sat on my bike in Dawson Creek, BC, in front of Mile Marker Zero, the southernmost (and beginning) point on the Alaska Highway.  Only 1,532 miles to go to Fairbanks.  The Great Alaska Adventure is definitely on.

I purposely planned today’s ride to be short because I wanted to be able to spend time in Dawson Creek visiting several museums, a gallery, and taking the obligatory tourist pictures.  As a result, we delayed our departure from Grande Prairie, AB, until a little after 10 a.m., which allowed us to stay just behind the westward moving rain that we rode in yesterday.  We had a few sprinkles today and rode on some wet roads but left the rain suits securely stowed in the saddlebags.  The ride today was only 85 miles, and it gave me time to do a little big game hunting.

I bagged the biggest beaver I’ve ever seen.   I’m going to leave it where I found it though, because there’s not a wall big enough in our North Carolina cabin to mount a beaver as big as this one.

We arrived in Dawson Creek about noon.  Or so I thought.  Turns out we had gone through another time zone and it was only 11 a.m.  (By the way, for you folks in Orange Park, that means as I write this a little past 9 p.m. it’s now after midnight on the First Coast.)  And we’ll move one time zone earlier when we get to Alaska in six days.  

We wandered through a local museum in a converted railroad depot that portrayed the history of Dawson Creek and the arrival of the northern terminus of the railroad there.  It was an interesting, eclectic little museum as most local museums are.  This one had a reconstruction of the station master’s house, a room with about 100 taxidermy specimens, a room with miscellaneous “old stuff” people had donated, and a small section devoted to the Alaska Highway.  You can’t expect local historical societies to re-create The Smithsonian, but a lot of small, local museums most of us pass by without visiting are full of interesting tidbits that help explain not just a particular town but often an entire geographic region.  Some of the most meaningful work I did as an historian was working with local historical societies helping them develop interpretive themes in their museums.  

We also visited a small (and the curators hope temporary) exhibit focused on the building of the Alaska Highway (known for years as the ALCAN Highway) in 1942 as the United States prepared to defend against an invasion of North America by the Japanese following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.  There’s no point going through the entire history of the building of the road since there are plenty of websites and books that offer thorough explanations, but I will say that it was a remarkable feat.  More than 11,000 soldiers built a 1,500 mile road through rugged wilderness in some of the worst climate and environmental conditions and did it in only 8 months.  Much of the highway I’ll travel in the next six days will follow exactly the path (and it was little more than a path) that they blazed.  I’m excited to see the incredible scenery that’s ahead, but I hope I remember and appreciate the almost superhuman sacrifices of those who built this engineering marvel.

Our last cultural stop today was at an art museum and gallery located in an old grain elevator in Dawson Creek.  The building was beautifully preserved on the outside and reconstructed on the inside, rising four stories using an inclined walkway that hugged the interior walls of the building.   Art created largely by local artists populated the walls. The ground floor gallery had a variety of art for sale, but we passed on it since most of what I liked was pottery that would not likely make the return trip to Florida intact.

Then it was time for a couple pictures for posterity (and this blog).

Tomorrow we follow the compass needle north as we set our sights on Fort Nelson, BC, about 280 miles from here.  Lots to see on the Alaska Highway and the weather is supposed to be some of the best we’ve had since we started out.  Blue skies and temperatures most of the day in the 60s and 70s.

 

My previous blog editing program seems to have disappeared completely.  I can’t even find it when I searched the App Store.  So I’ve downloaded a new one.  I’m not sure how this works, so for the next few days every post will be a practice post.  Please stick around.  After all, this is an adventure.

OK.  We’re making progress.  I just published the first paragraph and got it to show up after about five tries.  Now I’m editing my first BlogPad Pro post by adding this paragraph.  If this works, I’ll try to add a picture.

  OK.  This paragraph is the fourth update (including the first paragraph) and the picture.  Oh, by the way, don’t forget to click on the picture to see a full-size version.

 

Folks,

My normal blog posting program has quit working and I just tried an alternative.  After writing for half an hour, everything I had written disappeared.  Here’s the condensed version and then I’m quitting for tonight.

No more prairies and farms.  Moved into rolling hills and fragrant forests.  More rain in the afternoon.  Bikes are filthy.  On to Dawson City and the start of the Alaska Highway tomorrow.

 

Hopefully I’ll have better luck with the blog tomorrow.

Since leaving Bloomer last Thursday, we’ve logged more than 1,400 miles. Time for a day off for a little R&R and to launder the burgeoning bag of dirty clothes. We did all that and more.

Marilyn and Hanna slept in while I packed up the laundry in the Ultra’s tour pack and headed for a laundromat a mile down the road from our hotel. The laundry facility was next to a coffee shop with many choices of choice pastry, so everything worked out fine. Three people times four days multiplied by a little rain equals a heap of dirty duds. But the commercial washers and dryers had me finished by nine and it was time for the recreation part of the day.

We decided yesterday to head to the Telus World of Science because we learned that their premier exhibit was “Body Worlds and the Cycle of Life,” a show I’ve wanted to see for years. It’s a show that uses more than 200 real cadavers and body parts preserved in a process known as “plastination” to reveal all the internal workings of the human body and many of the frailties that afflict and affect us as we age or abuse our bodies. It’s hard to describe, but you can learn more if you’re interested by clicking here. I expected the exhibit to be good and it was better than I expected. What an amazing way to learn about who we are and how we work, at least from a physiological perspective. There are several traveling exhibits using this process; if you get the chance to see it, go.

One of the things I saw was a real aortic valve. That was dear to my heart, given my implanted titanium valve.

But the Telus World of Science in Edmonton had much more to offer than this one fabulous exhibit. We also visited four other galleries in the museum that ranged from the environment to crime detection to space exploration. Much of the exhibit material is geared to kids and today there were several visiting school groups, but there was also much that adults could learn and enjoy as well.

In all, we spent more than six hours at the World of Science and it was a good non-riding day.

When we left the museum, we headed for the West Edmonton Mall. I’m not much of a mall person and almost never go to the one three blocks from my house, but the WEM is pretty special, eh? It’s similar to the Mall of the Americas in Minneapolis. In addition to 800 stores/kiosks (36 of which are dedicated to footwear and another 45 are categorized as “Ladies Wear”) there are more than a dozen sit down restaurants plus several dozen fast food outlets. And did I mention the skating/hocky rink? And the Galaxyland Amusement Park. And the world’s largest indoor lake? And the ropes course? And the waterpark. And the bowling alley. And the hotel attached to the Mall? Holy Crap! It’s the Mecca of indoor shopping and entertainment. I think I heard they also have the world’s biggest parking lot. Two hours, including a pretty good dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory was enough for me. I really am ready to get on the road again.

Fortunately Marilyn and Hanna were content with a single shopping foray into Bath and Body Works and I only had to sit and wait on the Man Bench in front of the store for 20 minutes. While I was there I noticed that Edmonton really has an international cosmopolitan flavor. Not what I expected from what is basically an oil town.

The bikes are gassed, we’ve got three packs of clean clothes, and tomorrow we continue motoring west to Grande Prairie, Alberta. Rain is a possibility by the end of the ride, but we’ll start out dry.

Thanks again for following along on the Great Alaska Adventure and for your various blog comments.

“I can’t wait to get on the road again.”

Location:Edmonton, Alberta

The sky was overcast when we left Saskatoon at 8 a.m. and the weather forecasters were suggesting rain was a possibility along the corridor to Edmonton, so we suited up again. But other than additional protection from cool weather we never needed rain gear today. And more importantly, what little wind there was blew directly at us as we headed west. Riding perpendicular to the road again was a pleasant change from yesterday’s wind-blown slant riding. Today was chilly (53-63 degrees) but not bad and warmer than we’ll probably find after we turn north again in a few days as we head toward Fairbanks on the Alaska Highway. I didn’t wear heated gear and didn’t feel like I needed it, but Marilyn enjoyed her toasty jacket liner and gloves, leaving her leather jacket in the saddle bags.

The ride through Saskatchewan this morning was more of the flat, endless acres of wheat and other crops broken by prairie pothole ponds. But almost immediately after lunch and entry into Alberta, the character of the ground changed and rolling hills became the dominant feature.

The ride was generally uneventful, but I’m not complaining. There will be eventual days ahead, I’m sure.

Hanna was excited to get to Edmonton because Alberta has an 18-year-old drinking age and she chose for her first (legal) drink a chocolate, Kahlua and rum mixture. I suggested a shot of Mr. Daniel’s fine Tennessee elixir but she was set on her choice. Bottoms up. I can’t remember my first “legal” drink. Plenty of experience in high school and the Navy before I turned 21, though. I guess “legal” didn’t matter much by the time I got there.

A day off tomorrow in Edmonton for laundry, sight seeing and maybe a short night on the town.

“I can’t wait to get on the road again.”

Location:Edmonton, AB

I’ve said repeatedly that this trip was an adventure not a vacation. Today proved my point, again. Wind and rain made the day’s entry into Canada a rather unpleasant and extremely tiring ride. From the time we left Kenmare, ND, to the time we finally got to Saskatoon 11 hours later we rode through the second worst wind I’ve ever driven in (Wyoming was the worst) and the worst Marilyn has ever driven in. We were headed north-northwest today and all day long the wind blew 25-35 mph out of the west.

Those who know me fairly well, know that I’m generally left leaning and today I leaned left for 300 miles trying to keep the Ultra Classic beast on the road. Both Marilyn and I ended the day with sore left wrists from compensating for the wind and keeping the bikes from being blown off the road to the right. And our gas mileage dropped from 42 mpg to 36. And Canadian gas is $5.50 a gallon.

While the first 200 miles was windy and dry, the next 150 were windy and wet and cold. We survived, of course, and we have a story to tell when we regale everyone with our adventures, but, trust me, it was not fun. One day into Canada and Marilyn got to try out her new heated gear. It worked, but it took about 50 miles of driving in the wind and rain before we could find a Saskatchewan town with paved streets and a gas station where we could adjust our gear to the worsening weather. I have to say, though, that the guy who ran the convenience store took pity on three bedraggled wayfarers and gave us coffee on the house. Canadians as a group, I discover every time I ride here, are very friendly people.

I mentioned in the first paragraph that today’s ride took 11 hours and those who are paying attention are thinking, “Wait a minute that’s only an average speed of 31.818181 miles per hour. How slow were they going?” Well, we were riding a few kilometers per hour below the speed limit of 100 out of due regard for the wind and rain, but we also had to stop at the border crossing for about 20 minutes as the Canadian Border Patrol dutifully made sure we were neither terrorists nor money launders nor arms smugglers, asking us where we were going and why and how long we were going to take doing it and what my 18-year-old granddaughter did when she wasn’t traveling on a motorcycle. By the way, check the ribbon on Marilyn’s helmet Biker Braid during our stop at the border crossing to see evidence of the wind. (Biker Braids could also be sold as Biker Anemometers.)

And the wind was beating us so bad that when we stopped in Canada for the first time for coffee and donuts (and apple fritters and cinnamon rolls and raspberry filled donut holes) we lingered longer than a normal break warranted. And we did the same thing at lunch, after which we spent additional time donning rain gear for the impending deluge. And of course there was the break to re-arrange gear in the packs when the wind (have I mentioned the wind) ripped the cover off my T-Bag Dekker Bag in the driving rain and sent it sailing across the Saskatchewan prairie toward Manitoba.

Hanna’s entry into the world of international travel was certainly memorable and she kept her spirits pretty well, despite getting a little chilled before we could find a place to pull over and adjust gear. She had to put her camera away early because of the rain, but I really liked this shot she got of iron wheat.

The Trouper-of-the-Day award goes, as it always does, to Marilyn who, despite continued sore ribs from her fall a week ago, revived sufficiently during our final stop to add her heated jacket liner and gloves to her precipitation-friendly ensemble for the final slog to Saskatoon. And she’ll be ready to go again tomorrow when more rain but a little less wind is predicted for our two-wheel trek to Edmonton. (Heather and Hilary: You have a pretty incredible mom.)

When we reach Edmonton tomorrow we have a non-travel day scheduled to see some sights and relax a little.

“I can’t wait to get on the road again.”

Location:Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Yesterday I included a snide remark about North Dakota’s low scenic value. I apologize for that. Today I learned that North Dakota is not the flat, boring wheat-field patterned state I imagined it to be. Turns out there’s a striking beauty that’s been there thousands of years.

We started out today in Fargo at 8 a.m. under overcast skies that darkened gradually as we headed west on I-94. We had only motored about 60 miles when a look at the minacious clouds scuttling northeast in the distance convinced me that rain gear was the appropriate dress code for the rest of the morning, and we all suited up. About 20 miles down the road we saw a few puddles on the sides of the pavement and as we veered northwest at Jamestown we caught a few sprinkles. Although we saw significant rain in the distance to our left and right, we fortuitously dodged heavy rain, at least for a while.

As we approached the third hour of today’s ride, the skies again darkened dramatically and we stopped again for another iPad-assisted radar weather check. As luck would have it, the cafe we stopped at had PIE! The Chieftain Motel, Lounge and Restaurant in Carrington offered several tempting varieties of pie. I selected a big enough slice of Coconut Creme to last long enough for the approaching rain to come and go. Nothing says lunch-on-the-road like freshly baked Coconut Creme pie.

Marilyn met a big man at the cafe as the picture suggests, but ultimately he didn’t measure up to me and she saddled up and continued to follow my tail light north.

The black clouds turned gray and then billowing white as the final three hours of the ride went through country that precipitated the apology in the initial paragraph of this post. It turns out that North Dakota (and South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Saskatchewan, and Alberta) have a common feature known as the Pothole Prairie Region dotted with hundreds of thousands of small lakes and ponds, especially in the spring and early summer as winter snows melt and, instead of draining in creeks, streams and rivers, fill up the holes that had been created through glacial action 10,000 years ago.

It turns out that the ponds and lakes make perfect habitat for migrating and procreating waterfowl (e.g. ducks) that swam and flew in great numbers along our route. (As an ironic aside, while I was watching one of the ducks swimming in a pothole I hit a deep, non-glacial pothole in the North Dakota highway. No damage, but I could have ducked it if I hadn’t been watching the duck.)

The ride got even more interesting as we neared Minot because the flat land started to develop bumps. Not mountains, by any stretch, but nice rolling hills that framed the valley through which we were riding. I had all along thought North Dakota was flat as a billiard table. See what you can learn when you go on a 12,000-mile ride through this beautiful country of ours?

Tonight we’re about 40 miles from the northern border of the United States and tomorrow we present our passports and put away our cell phones, which become very expensive at $.59 a minute in the Dominion of Canada. Destination tomorrow: Saskatoon. Weather forecast: Clear to start and rain to finish. Hey, it’s an adventure.

(Don’t forget to double click on the pictures for larger images.)

“I can’t wait to get on the road again.”

Location:Kenmare, ND

Since May 30 and for 2,822 miles Marilyn and I rode as a twosome. Today’s 348 miles from Bloomer to Fargo was ridden as a threesome with Hanna appropriately perched on the princess seat behind me. For the next 34 days and 6,000 miles or so she’ll see Canada, Alaska and parts of the western United States from her new throne. Other than a little sunburn on her face, I think it was a good beginning. The weather cooperated with no rain and temps in the mid-50s at 7 a.m., reaching 80 degrees by the time we rolled into Fargo.

For those of you keeping track (and no one but me really is), when I crossed under the Welcome to North Dakota sign I checked off my 48th state on a motorcycle. If my luck and my Harley hold up, I’ll notch number 49 when I ride into Alaska in eight days. I’m not sure I’ll ever tally all 50. After all, now that I’ve seen scenic North Dakota, Hawaii would just be a let down.

There were two ways to get from Bloomer to Fargo: The quick way on the super slab or the longer way on roads less traveled. I chose the latter as I generally do.

U.S. highways, state highways, county highways and even some un-numbered roads today took us through fecund Wisconsin and Minnesota farm lands covered with waving grains and grasses that a city boy has no hope of identifying but which no doubt will, in various ways, feed people across the country and around the world. Whenever I travel in the countryside I’m always reminded–and amazed–at how much work America’s growing class puts in to feed the rest of us.

We saw a few of the more than 10,000 lakes that dot Minnesota’s countryside. I wish we could have seen more but they were too frequently secreted by dense forests blocking the view of road-bound travelers. My GPS teasingly revealed hundreds of blue dots and specks as we sped by, but despite efforts to peer between the dense branches of lofty pines, I rarely caught more than a glimpse of the lakes and shores lined with aging vacation cabins and pristine resorts. But I knew they were there, waiting for another trip.

Chance sightings of relics from days before superhighways reward riders who take what author William Least Heat Moon referred to as “Blue Highways,” minor roads on maps that usually show up as meandering blue lines connecting county dots with names like Barron, Almena and Turtle Lake. Today’s roadside parade of cultural artifacts included a 30-foot tall root beer mug, a 25-foot chef with a wooden spoon cruelly menacing a 4-foot snowman and a motley army of misshapen tin soldiers of various sizes manufactured by a folksy metalsmith with too much time and scrap on his hands. Hanna saw the same thing and captured them with her Nikon for me to use this evening as illustrations to my tale.

Tomorrow’s ride goes to Kenmare, ND, our last stop before crossing into Canada, eh (I’m practicing my “ehs” so I’ll fit in while were in Canada.) Could see some rain tomorrow, eh?

“I can’t wait to get on the road again.”

Location:Fargo, ND