It's Time to Head North!

I left Kerrville, TX right on schedule Saturday morning with the goal of hightailing it to the border as fast as I could! My mission was to escape the triple digit temps and skirt the wildfires in Colorado and Wyoming.

I almost made it out of Texas the first night. I got as far as Dumas to rest for the night. By the second night, I had made it to Cheyenne, WY. The third night I spent in Great Falls, MT. Almost to the border at Sweet Grass, MT!

The diesel prices were kind to me with the exception of Wyoming. I stopped in Douglas and paid the highest of the whole trip thus far. It was so ironic since Wyoming is one of the richest oil states in the nation. And just a couple miles outside of town, the oil rigs were all over both sides of the road just a pumpin away. Go figure.

Monday morning, I picked up some final provisions before heading to the border crossing. My RV sister Margareta from San Antonio will meet me there and travel with me as far as Watson Lake in the Yukon. Then she is heading south to Hyder, AK and I'll continue northward to the mainland. She has been visiting Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks this week and is ready to head north as well.

Meet my travel buddies Margareta, Lusci her military service dog (Read...our guard dog ;) and Yenta our mascot ;) They both travel well and Margareta is a world traveler.

We met up at the Duty Free Exchange to switch up our American money for Canadian. I also had to get used to wrapping my head around driving in kilometers opposed to miles, but it didn't take long after Margareta showed me a short cut ;) We switched off the international roaming on our cell phones and will be dependent on wifi now until we reach Alaska.

Now, to get across the border uneventfully. I had a couple of items I had double of the allowance permitted, so stashed half of those in Margareta's rig. The the only produce I had left was some ranier cherries I had been snacking on for the past several days. So Margareta and I feasted on them trying to finish them up before they took the from me, which they didn't anyway! I was also concerned they might take my bear spray, but that was Ok too! The border guard said as long as it wasn't pepper spay, it was Ok. So off we went!

The route north I chose to take to evade the wildfires was not the most scenic. Thousands of miles of flat, brown, prairie grass and sage brush. Now, Alberta is just a sight to behold! Plush green with bright, beautiful canola fields to feast the eyes on :)

Although, it was windy. The speed limit was 110 km (about 70 mph), but we could only go about 95 to 100 in our high profile rigs without "white knuckling" it to keep them on the road. We were heading for Red Deer, AB, but made it as far as the other side of Calgary last night before we had enough of those driving conditions. 

Today, we are aiming for Grande Prairie, AB. And, I had to switch up my shorts this morning for jeans. It's 59 degrees here! A far cry from those triple digits! ;)