Friday August 30 ... Weyburn to Saskatoon ... Grandson playtime!

On the road by 8:30 a.m. on the way to Saskatoon to visit and spend a couple of days with Heather, Eli and Easton.   Saw lots of fields that had already been harvested.

We saw Heather, Eli and Easton when we started our trip almost five weeks ago and yet, we could not believe how much Easton had changed during that time.  He is almost six months old...very tall for his age.  He is getting up on all fours and will soon be crawling.  For now he is scooting all over the place by rolling his way to wherever he wants to get.  We were amazed at how strong he is ... he can lay on his tummy for a very long time holding both his head and feet up in the air...think he is going to be a yogi! :) He is extremely good natured and always seems to have a smile on his face.  Needless to say, the camera got a work out!

Heather made a delicious supper of crockpot meatloaf, spaghetti, meat sauce, mixed veggies and biscuits.  Despite our intentions to quit eating so much, we couldn't resist the yummy meal and seconds called our names.  Easton had carrots ... and enjoyed them so much he thought he'd get every last drop by licking them off the baby chair tray!

After supper it was off to see a basketball game...Eli is on a team playing in a tournament this weekend.  Their team won and that means an 11:00 a.m. game on Saturday.  It was the first basketball game Harry has ever seen "in person" so that was fun.  Very fast moving...hard to get good pics with the gym lighting and speed of the game but here are a couple... Eli is #11 in the white jersey. Eli's sister, Sarah, came to the game so it was nice to meet her for the first time.

Back to the house for Eli to shower and then we headed downtown to take in the fireworks festival show.  It's a fireworks display choreographed to music...and is held down by the river.  Lots of people lined the banks to watch the show...a lovely spectacle of light and sound.  Easton slept through the whole thing!

Very hot here today...over 30'.  Saturday is supposed to be a bit cooler so that will make things more comfortable. We called it a night about 11 p.m.

Thursday August 29 ... Grand Forks, Minnesota to Weyburn, Saskatchewan

Woke in Grand Forks to a noisy thunderstorm!  By 10 a.m. the skies were starting to clear so we suited up and headed out.  Grand Forks and it's sister city across the Red River are the commercial hub of northeastern Dakota and an agricultural processing centre for potatoes, sugar beets and wheat.

Love these windmills...apropos of nothing took do with the text above...:)

On our journey one thing we noticed in almost every field we passed, we're tall stands of cattails in lots of standing water.  Sometimes these were on the sides of fields and at other times they were smack dab in the centre of fields...wondered if they are always there or if this is a particularly wet year.

Grand Forks to Devils Lake, to Rugby and Minot.  On the stretch of highway beyond that, between Minot and Kenmare, we went through a very beautiful stretch...kind of in an area that looked like it could have been a river bed at one time.  It reminded us of southern Alberta's rolling hills and farm fields.  

LOVE this one of a crooked old red barn...

There were lots of "numbers" on the hills, made from white painted rocks it looked like.  We made an assumption that this was someone local high school students did to commemorate their graduation year.

Nearing the customs crossing into Canada we came upon a sight that made us feel like we would soon be back in Saskatchewan! :). Hope you can spot the oil pump jack...

Bienfait, a coal strip mining operation for the power plant, was another roadside view we saw.  It came upon us out of nowhere...looked like a huge operation! 

We could tell the area had a lot of rain...look at this photo...where you see the water on both sides of the road, it is generally just grass!

We came across a lot of rail traffic today and instead of taking photos I decided to count the cars on two particularly long trains...one had 117 cars and the other 113, many of them with two containers stacked on top of each other on each car, and both trains pulled by only two engines.  You must be thinking by now that I have WAY too much time on my hands on the back of the blue machine! :)

We pulled into Weyburn for the night about 6:30 p.m. and we're greeted by these impressive sculptures.

A light supper and time to write the blog and relax a bit.  On to Saskatoon tomorrow to see Heather, Eli and Easton.  Looking forward to the visit...

Wednesday August 28 ... Ironwood, Michigan to Grand Forks, North Dakota

Another day spent mostly making time on the back of the bike, though we did particularly enjoy one little town, Ashland, Wisconsin, that we went through shortly after leaving Ironwood.  It is now primarily a recreation focused town, but once had huge docks where in the late 19th century millions of tons of timber and iron ore crossed through.  We drove through the town and I took lots of great pics...

Duluth, Minnesota was the next major centre we passed through.  We had originally planned to stop and walk along the waterfront but when we got into the city we were both surprised by all the smog...in addition to the bad smells, we both felt nauseous.  Grain elevators, ore docks and shipyards line the harbour of this large Lake Superior port...not sure where the smells were coming from.  Later I googled pollution for the city and was informed its one of the best in the state in terms of how little pollution there is but you could have fooled us!  You can see the smog in these photos....perhaps we just hit the city on a particularly bad day...

The map we had indicated there were only three more towns before our destination of Grand Forks, but it turns out there were many small towns along the way, so we saw lots of rural countryside and I snapped more pics from my perch on the back of the gold wing...:)

Loved this water tower's paint job...

Took this one in the town of Crookston, in honour of Easton's dad...last name Crooks! :)

This appeared to be a row of trees planted we thought as a potential wind break...wonder if they'll do the job seeing as they have no foliage on the bottom! :)

We think these are ripening soybeans...the only crop we haven't been able to definitively identify.  I did wonder why they were irrigating them and Harry said it could have been because they were under stress because of the high temperatures...

Some big farming operations...

We rode through a heat wave...temps up to 35' over the course of the day and high humidity.  Schools have been "in" this week but some of them were closing early because of the high temps and the fact that they are not air conditioned.  We both felt like dish rags by the time we arrived in Grand Forks.  After refreshing showers it was time for a light supper at a nearby hotel restaurant, a short walk and then time to call it a night.