Arrived and eating my first bucket o steam-ahs, with a bee-ah.  Accent is as thick as the last two days of fog

An on time departure this morning, perhaps a few minutes early even.  The first part of the drive through the rest of North Dakota was again, flat as a pancake, and boring.  Once entering Minnesota the landscape finally changed to trees, but relatively still flat, but gave me something to look at.  Thru the Chippewa National Forest, over the Mississippi and St. Louis rivers.  I feel like we crossed a few hundred railroad tracks, and bridges across the 1000 lakes.

One of the first hills in days, was an 11% downgrade in Duluth, which (city) is a heck of a lot bigger than I would have thought.

I was finding 94 octane gas in Canada, oddly at the no name, non-chain stations, but since I’ve entered the Mid-West, 91 only…. grrrrr

I thought Canada had the US hands down on the big rigs, 34 wheels was pretty standard up north, but arriving in Marquette, MI Mickey swears he counted 46 in the dark, and we all know he can’t count……  My due diligence on the random city between Minot, and Rochester wasn’t as thorough as it should have been.  The town had 3-5 CABIN motels, totaling maybe 100 rooms put together, with a restaurant and bar between 5-20 miles pending incoming or outgoing of the city(?)  (Covington, MI)

Shout out to Kelly in Marquette @Portside for taking care of us!

Video and some sunset photos to come.

Goodbye to the Coopers, and Canada today.  Was great hanging with them this past week!

Enter ‘Murica

The drive was pretty gosh darn boring, as it’s just flat, more flat, with a side of flat for miles.  There was a pretty nasty accident that shutdown both sides of the highway,  where both sides were on the shoulder from the emergancy vehicles in the main lanes.  One neat thing though, were some bird flying North.  By some, I mean ~100,000, that spanned several miles littering the sky in funky geometric V/triangles.  Entering the border, was little goofy.  We were questioned for 15ish minutes (I’ll have to check the footage) and all the doors were opened and slight rummaging through occurred.

Shout out to the PVI ladies for keeping Kage company last night, and celebrating her Birfday.

ASPLUNDHA

Time Lapse Video

Been there done that!  HA

Last night was a blast.  Got to hang out with some of Mattias’s hockey parents, at a VIP section of the Bar.  Very nice people!  Shout out to Eric, Monique, and Dave.  Went to the “Beer Hunter” and got my arse handed to me in Golden Tee by Cam, but redeemed myself in Foosball with the locals, despite the modded Tornado table with missing side rails.

Today has been fun.  My nuts have been torqued for the drive home.  Ran over to the neighbors to see the days kill (120lbs deer) be cleaned in the garage, and shot the shit with the neighbors.  Another stellar meal prepared mainly by Mickey, but we all pitched in and contributed a portion to the 3 hours of eating.  Karin hooked me up with a neck massage in prep for the next portion of the drive.  Taking off early-ish for Minot, ND or perhaps a tad further depending how we feel.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful Wife!  Love you Kage.

Cleaning the car out a bit for todays errands:  Tire, picking up a nused vehicle with Karin, hunting for a deal on RockStar 🙂

Project N.A.M.B: a2a/p2p is planned.  (North America’s My Bitch: Arctic to Atlantic/ Prudhoe to Portland, ME.  Different route home, through the Great Lakes, and UP.  4 new winter tires are getting put on tomorrow by a friend of the Coppers, to replace the dead (un-patchable) tire.  Trying to keep things consistent, as this was the final season on my current tires anyway.

Route looks like this so far:
Edmonton     Minot        738
Minot            Covington 666
Covington     Rochester  791
Rochester     Portland    492
Portland       Nokesville  581

A fantastic dinner is being whipped up by Mickey tonight.  Can’t wait to NOM it down!  It’s Thursday, so a shout out to my GN friends!

Been a while since new video’s were posted from the drive, due to limitations in bandwidth.  It’s taken all day, but 10/29 – 11/2 have been uploaded.  5 second shots and 20fps.

To Prudhoe
From Prudhoe
Day1Return (Fairbanks to Whitehorse)
Day2Return (Whitehorse to Fort Nelson)
Day3Return (Fort Nelson to Edmonton)