We faced far more scrutiny getting into Canada and back into the US this time than we did earlier in the trip. The first time, the Canadian agent had a sense of humor and wished us a safe and happy trip. The US agent just took away my oranges in the cooler and sent us on our way. This time, the Canadian agent detained us with questions for over ten minutes, while the US agents asked us to open the Joey. They claimed it was so they could just check it out for themselves, but had we refused, I have a feeling that would not have gone over well...
Amusingly enough, both sets of border patrol agents, Canadian and American, knew what geocaching was! I like to think that in the end, caching greased the wheels of travel for us because perhaps in their minds, we were just techie hikers. George and I both have pretty vanilla backgrounds, with only me ever crossing the wrong side of the law. It was a speeding ticket. I was given probation before judgement. It is long gone now by a decade and surprisingly, was not in my Celica, but my Subaru.
The drive itself was long, long, long. The scenery, while pretty beautiful, was pretty barren of anything man-made. We played at least 20 games of travel bingo on the iPad with the "RTBingoHD" app. I think there must be something wrong with the game. I only won 2 of the 20 games we played. I don't understand how that is even possible. Bingo is a game of chance. I would be willing to accept a 75% loss rate, but 90%? Something is amiss... This barren scenery made it incredibly difficult to find things like gas stations, motels, restaurants, railroad crossings, and road signs in general. Many a game was won with some combo of a sun, cloud, tree, bird, cow, horse, speed limit sign and big rig.
The first/ Saskatchewan cache was "Workman Cemetery Cache". Rated a 2/1.5, our only concern was whether or not it would be missing and if we could actually find it. Thankfully, we had seen this exact hide type done a few times before and did not get stumped. The cemetery was started by a group of homesteaders back in 1895. We did not explore, as the cache was outside the fence, but I would have loved to poke around to check out the tombstones for old interesting ones.
I have said more than a few times that since caching so often takes us to old cemeteries, that I need to get a spiral pad of thin paper and start to do rubbings from some of the designs on the old gravestones. We have seen some really beautiful ones. People even do rubbings of loved ones' names when they visit the Vietnam Wall; it is a memento of their visit. The Farber Gravestone Collection consists of photographs of gravestones - over 13,500 of them. There are some amazing, wacky, touching images in there. Have a look and try searching for your last name to see what comes up. * There are no stones from Maryland in the collection.
The second/ Manitoba cache was "Cacti Congregation". Rated a 3/3, it was not as bad as we feared it might be. The terrain might have really been a 1.5, maybe a 2. There was high grass, and a boatload of grasshoppers in all sizes. We were foolish and walked to and from the cache through the tall grass in flipflops. Of course, this meant little hoppers were boinging all over the place and one or two may have gotten between the sole of a foot and a flipflop... Crushed grasshoppers between one's toes is neither a delicious nor exquisite feeling. It is awful.
We found a lock-n-lock container hidden in the ruins of a 100+ year old church on the prairie. It actually is part of the Turtle Mountain-Souris Plains Geocaching Heritage Tour. All of the caches' sites are places that have stories from the past that are begging to be told.
After making our finds and getting back into the states, we made a beeline for Minot, North Dakota to get closer to the Interstate. When we arrived in town, we decided to look for some food. Using urbanspoon.com and Google reviews, we chose Big Time Bistro, and man, did we strike gold. Neat atmosphere -- they have TVs and play nothing but music videos, novel, since we never see them on MTv any more! Delicious food that we have to try to copy once we get back home -- a Big Cheese for me and a Hawaii 5-0 for George. We each loved our sandwiches and tasted each other's. We decided to switch plates halfway through and each have a half of each sandwich. Perfect.
We made it to Bismarck, North Dakota to sleep tonight. Tomorrow has more driving coming, so it's off to dreamland now.
the geo cache on the fence looks like a fake top to a fence
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