Alaska 2008

Another early start for us. We were on the road by 6:30 AM. Both my GPS and my travel planning software estimated the trip at at a bit over seven hours and we also figured we were moving into the Central Time Zone so we figured with the time zone change we should get into Saskatoon at around 2 PM. I should know better than to trust the conservative estimates of the software and GPS because we made the trip in less than six hours. Almost all of our trip was at a posted speed limit of 110 KM/H (69 MPH). There were only a few towns, most notably Edmonton and Lloydminster (which straddles the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan) that caused us to slow down. Complicating things was the fact that we were now on Central Time, but they don't change to Daylight Savings Time so we arrived a little after noon.

Once you leave Edmonton on the Yellowhead Highway, you know you are on the prairie. It is flat! You can tell you are near a town because you can see the big grain elevators which also mark where the railroad tracks are. We passed fields of what looked like wheat and the yellow fields of Canola flowers (Rapeseed). The other thing you notice is that the oil industry is big in Alberta and Saskatchewan. A lot of the fields have oil well heads and storage tanks in the midst of whatever crop they are growing. Our campground has a number of dormitory trailers used by oil workers as their home away from home.

The other thing that tells you that you are on the prairie is the constant wind. Today it blew in from the southeast at speeds in excess of 15 MPH. There were gust that were strong enough to slow us down a bit as we traveled on the highway. This dropped our fuel consumption down by nearly 20% from our average (but still higher than our average for the 2005 Alaska trip). Tomorrow the wind is supposed to shift to come out of the northwest so maybe it will give us a push.

This campground is one we stayed in on the way up to Alaska in 2005. One of the things that we remembered are the Prairie Dogs, who have a network of tunnels under the various campsites. I was sitting outside the trailer this afternoon watching a couple of these animals feeding in the grass and always on the alert. If they see a shadow or hear a sound they dive into the nearest hole and into the safety of their tunnels. As we were walking around the campground this evening, our after dinner ritual, we also asked ourselves why we had not planned more time in this place. It has large sites, with trees to provide some shade and we never explored Saskatoon. Maybe we will stop here for a longer period on our next trip to Alaska... if and when that occurs.

Finally, summer seems to have finally caught up with us. The temperature reached 85° and at 8 PM was still registering 81°. With summer on the prairie comes the the threat of thunderstorms which are forecast for our route over the next few days. We don't mind the heat but could do without the thunderstorms.