Graduation Day

By now you realize that the weather where we are is probably much better than the weather where you are so this should be my last post with any reference to the weather.  Today started out with us waking up to the cooing of doves outside our RV.  After breakfast we ran into a neighbour.  Well not actually someone who lives close to us or someone we know, just someone who lives in Estevan.  Another person from Saskatchewan.  We hadn’t seen a Saskatchewan vehicle plate since we left Saskatchewan November 1, he mentioned that he hadn’t seen a Saskatchewan plate in over 4 months. We stood and chatted for a while about our adventures and then we were on our way.  The truck thermometer registered 14.  By the end of the day it was 25.

You are also getting tired of hearing about the landscape.  Still more farmland today and guess what they are harvesting?  You got it, corn.  I can’t imagine the number of acres we saw with corn still standing, let alone the fields that had already been harvested.  We passed one place where they were stockpiling corn outdoors.  They had an area at least as long as a city block and around 100 feet deep with corn piled up as high as the auger could reach.  I suspect we will see much of the same tomorrow.

I mentioned it was graduation day. Today we graduated from the rural 4 lane divided interstate I29 to the more urban 6 land divided interstate I80 west through Omaha Nebraska.  So for the most part you have 3 lanes going each way at 70 miles/hour, except for the additional 2 lanes that are added regularly to allow extra traffic on and off the freeway. These extra two lanes were all on the right hand side, in larger centres they can be on both sides of the road. A little hair-raising at times but good practice for when we get into the bigger centres. These 6 lanes lasted almost to Lincoln.  Tomorrow we turn south again and check out the State highway system as we make our way towards Texas.

I have been using my US Dollar visa card to buy fuel, and it works slick.  Last time we drove down south you couldn’t pay for fuel at the pump because you had to enter your Zip Code.  We don’t have such a thing.  But I have found no such questions asked when I stick my card in the pump.  Oh and the price of fuel you say, what is it?  Well when we left Saskatoon, diesel was running about 99.9¢ per litre.  On average I have been paying about $2.58 US per gallon. I think if you do the conversion with the Canadian dollar at 0.75, this works out to be about 91¢ per litre Canadian.  So things are a little cheaper here.

Another highlight of the day included another lovely picnic lunch at a highway rest stop.  We ate outside on a picnic table and didn’t need to have our jackets on.  We are stopped again at a highway rest stop and again are concerned as it says “no overnight camping” as well you can only park for a maximum of 10 hours.  So we may get a knock on the door in the middle of the night, lets hope not.  There is a larger truck stop only a few miles down the road so hopefully there won’t be any complaints about us from those that drive for a living.

Till Tomorrow.