Monday morning we got up nice and early - “farmer early”. Okay, it was only 7:00, but for us Westerners that equates to 5:00! We rolled out of bed, threw some clothes on, and ran out to the barn just in time for the truck to arrive with epic cuteness.
What is in those crates you might be wondering?
PEEPS!
Crate after crate after crate of baby peeps! Forty-seven THOUSAND peeps to be precise! We helped wheel them into the long, dark barn. I emphasize dark so you will have compassion on how grainy and blurry some of these photos had to be! I almost died when I saw how they offloaded them. They just DUMPED them. The chickens seemed to be totally fine with it, though!
A cool motion-freezing shot would be nice, but it was way too dark to have that much shutter speed to play with, so here's a blur of fuzz being dumped!
Okay, now this is where I have to show you way too many cute photos (and I held a lot back, too!). They are just too awesome and fluffy! If you endure all the photos, I'll show you a video at the end ;)
And here is the promised video because they are just TOO CUTE to not share in "real life":
Looking back to the house where we returned for a fabulous breakfast:
My awesome friend, Heidi :)
We headed out around 1:00pm, with the wonderful lunches Heidi packed for us, and made our way northwest through North Dakota. It was kind of beautiful in its own way - especially with all the huge white pelicans on all the lakes and sloughs.
All was going along splendidly until suddenly Nick exclaims, “Are you serious?!” I wake up from my half asleep state and see - yes, you got it - flashing red and blue lights in our rear view window. AGAIN! I turn to Nick and asked, "Were you speeding?!" To which he replies, "I don’t think so? Maybe?"
The officer approaches while we try and figure out what we did wrong.
Do you know how fast you were driving tonight?
No? I think I was going 75 or 80?
You must have been because I was driving 70mph and you passed me. (Yes, we passed a cop car without realizing it).
Nick explains that we thought the speed limit was 75 and that we just had the cruise control on. He further adds we’re Canadians and have no idea what we’re doing. (That’s paraphrased, but the conversation went similarly). Then the cop asks for Nick’s license and registration. The license Nick does not have because it got taken away in Ohio in the ninja, invisible work zone. The cop, of course, asks why Nick doesn’t have a proper license. I see Nick start to stammer not knowing what to say, so I quickly pipe up, “work zone.” Nick then explains that we didn’t know we were in a work zone and that we think we had our license taken away to ensure that we would pay the fine, but we don’t actually know. And no, it’s not suspended. The paper copy is our new license. He goes back to his car and we sink into our seats in defeat. He returns quickly and lets us off with a warning! (Probably because neither he nor we knew how fast we were going, but it was just “faster than he was”).
Gratefully we drive off into the sunset. No, I’m not trying to write a cliche. We literally drove off and encountered this freakishly AMAZING sunset. Here are a few snaps, and know that I did nothing to enhance the colour of these. This is what it looked like as it progressed!
We drove on and on into the night. We finally reached the Canadian boarder at 10:43pm. The crossing closed at 10:00.... There was no one there. We idled in the abandoned complex and realized we had little gas and no cell service. Out came my friend Tara’s trusty GPS, and it told us gas was 40km back almost the way we came. We drove back into the night and found the station about 45 minutes later and filled up. Nick ran into a country inn to see if we could borrow some wifi and got a massive lecture about us young people and our lack of paper maps. We got a free map of North Dakota out of it at least!
Then we headed BACK the original way we came, but went an additional 45 minutes past that point to a 24-hour crossing further West. (The next morning Nick’s dad points out we could have saved a ridiculous amount of time, but using the crossing to the East of us). We crossed the boarder around 1:00am, and found out it was actually only midnight as we came through a time zone. The crossing guard asked us where in Coquitlam we were from, which was odd until we found out he used to be stationed there. They did the customary cursory glance in the back of our car and we joked that it would be alright with us if they gave us an excuse to take it all out and pack it properly. The back of our car looks like a bomb went off right now. Floor to ceiling insanity. They said that was fine and wished us safe travels.
I tossed and turned and tried to sleep from about then to 3:15am. Our car is just a little too small for adequate stretching out in the front. Nick the whole time munched on candies to stay awake and did not share with me that he had yet to pass an open gas station. For some reason we got terrible mileage and suddenly our gas light was on. We debated on what to do and checked to see if I had cell service now that we were back in Canada. We were less than an hour from Nick’s parents’ house. We decided that since I had Rogers service and we have BCAA that we would go as far as we could until we ran out of gas and then call them to rescue us. Once or twice we tried pulling off an exit in hopes of a station being open, but they never were and it was costing us precious gas fumes each time we did so. We tried to never accelerate and keep cruise control on. We knew we had 70 - 80 kms to go in order to make it. We watched the kilometres click by one at a time in the orange glare of the gas light. 30kms. 40kms. 50! We had made it 50kms past the gas light and were literally just over 10 minutes away from Saskatoon at this point. Slowly, slowly, slowly we drove into the city. Always coasting when possible. Dreading every red light that meant a moment of idling and having to get the car moving forward again. And sure enough, we made it!! We now know that we can drive at least 70.5 very cautious prairie kilometres after the gas light comes on. Phew!
We pulled in around 4:30am, which was actually the equivalent to 5:30am in the time zone we woke up in. So 22 hours later, our day was done and we crashed into bed at Nick’s parents’. Never a dull moment ;)
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