Headin' down the highway - lookin' for adventure

Well - we're out of the deep freeze - finally. Regina was challenging to say the least - the diesel furnace packed it in while we were still in Saskatoon so Regina at -30 was a serious challenge. But we made it out of the cold yesterday. Sunday night we were south of Great Falls and then we came all the way to Kanab (southern Utah) on Monday.

Customs was a breeze. Its funny - Marilyn & I were talking about this yesterday - we always worry about US & Canadian customs but never Mexican customs. We know that the Mexicans will be unscrupulously polite. The whole Mexican border experience may be a complete muddle - everything may have changed from yesterday, let alone last year and we expect it to take a long time but we don't worry about capricious ignorance. We do worry about someone having a bad day and taking it out on us when we cross into the US or back into Canada. Yesterday though was a treat. The guy looked at our passports, gave them back and said "did anyone ask you to bring anything into the US?" Of course I said "No". He said "odafaia lsdifl ndew sodi" I said "Pardon me?" He said "Have a nice trip" And that literally was it. There was a line up 1/4 of a mile long coming into Canada but we drove right up to the window on the US side. So it took less than a minute total.


The trip to Great Falls was uneventful, dry pavement and great conditions. We should have kept on but I was getting tired so we shut down for the night. Monday I woke up to light snow but the road quickly turned into a mess and it was tough going until we were nearly out of Montana. The picture is taken up in Monida pass. If you look closely you can see the reflector stakes alongside the road. They are about 3' high and they have 3' extensions added to them for the winter. That is because the snowplows use them to gauge where the edge of the pavement is and the snow ridges in the pass get so high that the stakes get buried. Fortunately there's not that much snow there - yet.


Jorgito got much braver on this trip. Up until now he has travelled under the futon. And never come out while we were moving except for very brief periods. We don't know if it was the cover of darkness or if he is just getting accustomed to our nomadic life but Sunday night there he was wanting to be picked up and he spent most of the evening in Marilyn's lap. Monday he was in my way while I was trying to handle the snow pack and blowing snow early in the morning and then he just naturally settled into Marilyn's lap for a large part of the day.


Last night we arrived in Kanab very late and found our way to the Hitch'n Post campground. Its pretty de-classe but adequate although what they call a pull-through site is a little different than what I would have expected. This morning I got the satellite set up and switched over to SatMex 5 so now we are good to central or south America. Not that we are likely to go there - this year. In theory us tripod users have some special hoops to jump through to switch satellites so I was understandably sceptical when the guy who sold me this system absolutely assured me that it was no problem. Until I had actually made the switch I was reserving judgement but if all the switches go as smoothly as the one this morning did then it truly is no problem. We need to switch each time we move north to south or back because the footprint of the northern satellite doesn't go far enough south & the footprint of SatMex 5 doesn't go far enough north.


This afternoon we've got some housekeeping to do and we need to get ready for an early departure tomorrow morning. Tomorrow night we are supposed to meet up with a couple in Nogales in preparation for helping them cross the border for the first time. More from Alamos.