Steve was just saying yesterday that we have had the most incredible weather so far on this trip. And that was certainly the truth. Then we woke up this morning to heavy rain. It was pouring fiercely outside the hotel. A review of the radar, however, showed it to be centralized over the Duluth area, so I was optimistic that we would drive out of it in quick order. And, as luck would have it, when we went down to pack the car and get going, it was not raining at all!! So we loaded up, jumped in, and were on our way at 8:35 and 63 degrees. And as we pulled out of the parking lot, it began to come down in buckets. I guess we had a little bit of the Irish luck. OK with me!!

We hit the road and headed for Winnipeg, Manitoba. The GPS did not take us on the route we had anticipated, but that was okay. Instead of arriving at the border crossing in an hour or so, we did not cross into Canada until mid-afternoon. We drove west to the border of North Dakota, crossed it, and the turned north instead.

By 9:30 AM the sun was shining and the rest of the day was wonderful…warm and clear skies. We drove through many small towns again today. Grand Rapids was one the larger ones with a population of about 10,800. It was smaller that I had expected, but it was alive and well, unlike some of the others, which seemed to be stuck in the 1950's, tired, and run down. But these towns are home to many people, and so they must be respected for being what they are, and apparently what the residents want them to be.

Much of the drive today was through farm country. Now, identifying the crops from the car is a challenge, but I always look for the ones I recognize and for the others, I look for clues in the towns and on the signs. So, given that, we saw many corn fields in bloom and some past bloom, we saw many fields of golden grain…could have been wheat, oats or barley, we saw what looked like soy beans in many areas and we saw what I am deducing, was sugar beets. We also saw the very identifiable sunflowers looking almost ready to harvest those delicious sunflower seeds that I love so much.

Early in the day we drove through rolling hills that then turned to a very flat topography and remained so for the rest of the day. The fields alternated between golden yellow and dark green, with scattered trees peppering the landscape, some fields perfectly manicured and others looking scrubby and unkempt with overgrown grass and scrub brush. We saw white farmhouses, red barns, grain elevators, and hundreds of silos to contain the corn and wheat and other grains. And we saw farmers driving their harvesters under a tan cloud of dried dirt tossed up behind them. The rails were on our left for about 100 miles, following us closely the whole time, and wild flowers decorated the right side of the road, often buttercups and black-eyes susans intermixed with infestations of ragweed and goldenrod.

The only thing to really change it all was driving into Winnipeg where the roads are plentiful, the condo and apartment buildings are big and tall, the houses are tiny and the traffic was very thick and very slow. Tomorrow, we will drive into the city for a better look then we will be off to Regina, Saskatchewan.