When we left North Portal, we took Saskatchewan Hwy 39 up through Estevan and Weyburn to the little town of Rouleau. Rouleau is the town where a portion of the Canadian comedy tv show Corner Gas was filmed. In the last couple of years, I have become a big fan of the show Corner Gas. I have watched episodes on Youtube and bought a DVD off ebay. In the tv show the town is called Dog River. The production company built a set out on the west side of town. From the road it looks like a combination gas station & cafe.
Across the highway, the local grain elevator had the name Dog River painted on it for the show.
Back in 2008 on my way back from Alaska, I snapped a selfie in front of Gopherville near the Saskatchewan Manitoba border. It was not particularly becoming, but it was fantastic compared to this one that I snapped in front of Corner Gas.
Note to self- Next time loose the glasses, put a cap on and spit out that damn gum before you take the picture.
I did not go inside on my way up, but I did stop back by on my way home. I will leave that story for later on. After we left Rouleau, we back tracked along Hwy 39 to the intersection with Hwy 6 and took that up to Regina. Regina is the capital of the province of Saskatchewan. All indications are that it is a very interesting town. It is the home of Mosaic Stadium, the home field for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. The folks in Saskatchewan are very serious about their football. Best I can tell, the Roughriders are to Saskatchewan what a combination of Auburn and Alabama would be to the state of Alabama. Since we were on what I thought at the time was a tight schedule, we did not spend much time in Regina but instead picked up Hwy 11 and headed north toward Saskatoon.
A good many of the side streets and secondary roads in North Dakota and Saskatchewan are gravel. A combination of my search for a campground on the previous day and driving around at the Corner Gas site in Rouleau had left the Roadtrek looking a lot like an Appaloosa pony. As we were driving north on Hwy 11, we came to the little town of Chamberlain SK. Most of Hwy 11 is four lane or twined as they call it in Canada and seems to bypass the little towns. The section through Chamberlain is 2 lane with the town on one side of the road and the railroad on the other. With the road passing right through the town, you are able to see much more. As I passed through Chamberlain I spotted a sign for a car wash with an arrow pointing down a side street. I went up a block and circled back and sure enough, there was a do it yourself car wash. It was a small enclosed building with a single garage type door. I drove in and checked it out. Seemed fully functional so I deposited a loonie into the coin slot and started washing. Three or four loonies later the Roadtrek was still not completely clean but much more presentable than it had been. We got back on Hwy 11 and headed back north toward Saskatoon.
With the stopping at Canadian customs, the site seeing around Corner Gas and the carwashing, this day had kind of flown by. It wasn't quite time to stop for the day but my previous days experience had taught me that it was a good idea to start looking early. I pulled up the camping POI (points of interest) on my GPS and noticed that there appeared to be a good campground ahead in the town of Davidson SK which is about 56 km north of Chamberlain. I selected it and the GPS started giving us directions. When we got to Davidson, the GPS told me where to exit off of Hwy 11 and directed me over to the northeast side of town. In preparation for this trip I had loaded a lot of POI into the GPS and had gotten the coordinates of the POI from many different sources. Turns out that the coordinates that someone had entered for the Davidson Campground were at their campsite on the backside of the campground. The GPS had taken me via a side street to as close as it could get me to that point. Problem was that there was an big overgrown hedge and fence between me and the campground. The street I was on was about as wide as a residential driveway but I headed down it to get to the front of the campground. About halfway down I met some folks in a little red Honda coming in the opposite direction. I got over as far and I could to the right and stopped. They managed to squeeze by the Roadtrek with only inches to spare (or actually I guess it was only centimeters to spare, after all everything in Canada is metric). When we got to the end of the drive and back on to a regular city street we were able to turn right, go about half a block and there was the entrance to the campground.
I have to say that it was well worth the effort. The city of Davidson appeared to have recently done an expansion and upgrade to their campground. The roads were well maintained and the bathhouse appeared to be new. Dixie and I quickly determined that this would be a good place to spend the night. We drove a few blocks south to the local Co-op grocery and got some things for supper and then returned to the campground, picked out a spot and proceeded to enjoy the evening.
Day 6, June 15th, started well. We left the Davidson campground and once again started up Hwy 11 toward Saskatoon. Saskatoon is a pretty good size city with a population of slightly more than 200,000. I had some online computer work that I needed to complete on the 15th so when we neared the city, I pulled up the POI for wifi. There was a Starbucks listed not too far off Hwy 11 so I selected it. When we got to the location indicated, there was no Starbucks in sight. Unfazed, I selected another Starbucks location nearby and drove to it. No Starbucks there either. On the way to that Starbucks I passed a McDonalds so I doubled back to try there. When we got to the McDonalds we discovered that the parking lot was very small and every space was taken. At that point I decided that my computer work could wait until later in the day so we got back on Circle Drive and headed for Hwy 16, the Yellowhead Hwy, which would take us to Edmonton AB. About the time we got back on Circle Drive, it started raining really hard. I turned on the wipers and proceed to drive on. Suddenly I heard what sounded like a lug wrench being dropped under the hood. At the same time, the drivers side wiper went hard left and stopped and the passenger side wiper continued to flop back and forth covering about one half of the passenger side of the windshield. I managed to get off the road and pull into a parking lot at a strip mall. It was still raining fairly hard. I put on my rain coat and got out to see if I could determine the problem. I discovered that the wiper linkage arms from the wiper motor to the wiper blade arms had come lose. During the time I was standing out checking the problem, the rain had let up to a drizzle. As there was nothing I could do where I was, I decided to drive on and look for a car repair shop. I got back on Circle Drive and started driving along slowly. I quickly discovered that at around 40 mph the water blew off the windshield about as well as the wipers removed it when they were working. I was much closer to being out of Saskatoon than I had realized and before I knew it, I was driving along in the countryside. The bad news was there were no car repair shops in that part of rural Saskatchewan. The good news was that the windshield was relatively clear. Occasionally a passing truck or automobile would sling water up on my windshield and obstruct my view and a few times I had to pull over to the side of the road and clear the windshield. We proceeded on at a slightly reduced speed and it continued to drizzle rain off and on.
When we got to North Battleford, I stopped at a McDonalds and got lunch and took care of the computer work that need handling. It was still drizzling off and on but by now I was getting pretty used to it. From North Battleford, we followed the Yellowhead Hwy to Lloydminster. Lloydminster sits on the Saskatchewan / Alberta border and is actually two towns, Lloydminster SK and Lloydminster AB. I needed gas so I pulled into a Shell self service station, put my credit card in the pump and prepared to pump my gas. Instead I was greeted with an odd error message. I tried a second time and got the same message. I went inside and it was then that I discovered that American credit cards would no longer work in Canadian gas pumps. I had stopped earlier in Regina and filled up at a Co-op station and a young man had come out and pumped my gas and took my card inside. He had mentioned something about the card reader not working and I thought he meant it was broken. Not the case, what he was telling me was that Canadian card readers will no longer read American credit cards. Canada has converted to the rfid chip cards. They insert the card, enter a pin number and the card identifies itself. Fortunately the gas stations, Walmarts, etc still have machines where they can swipe an American credit card but they have to print out two receipts. You sign one and give it back to them and keep the other one.
After the gasoline fill up ordeal we crossed over into Lloydminster AB and stopped at the Walmart and got a squeege and some Rain-x. When we left Walmart we proceeded to Vegreville AB, the home of the worlds biggest Easter egg. At the time I was not aware that Vegreville was the home of the worlds biggest Easter egg but I did know that they had a Walmart. We went to the Walmart where I got a box of chicken fingers from their deli and asked at the service desk if we could park for the night in their parking lot. They said certainly so Dixie and I ate the bulk of the chicken fingers and went to bed early. It had been a hectic day. That night it rained virtually all night and was still overcast when we woke up the next morning.
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