TRAVEL DAY
From: Val Marie Campground, Val Marie, SK.
To: Val Marie Campground, Val Marie, SK.
Day 342 – Huh? We went from Val Marie Campground to Val Marie Campground? Yep. Today was a worse day than yesterday. We were supposed to cross the border today, from Saskatchewan Canada to Montana U.S.A. Best laid plans…..
We were up early this morning, wanting to get an early start because we did not have reservations for a campground in Montana, and the one we’d hoped to stay at was a first-come, first-served campground. The early bird gets the worm. It was 37 degrees with some haze and some sun. We had just enough gas in the RV to make it to Malta, Montana. This was the first town that had gas stations, and coincidentally was our destination. The campground where we wanted to stay was 20 miles east of Malta. We could swing through Malta and get gas before heading to the campground.
We packed everything up and the girls went begrudgingly into their traveling room. NOW where are we going?, they wanted to know. Back to the U.S.A., we said. Home Sweet Home Where the Buffalo Roam and all that stuff.
After dumping tanks, but remaining full of drinking water (because the next campground didn’t have hook-ups or a dump station), we were ready to leave Val Marie Campground on schedule, a little before 9 a.m.
The slide-out on the passenger side wouldn’t close. Rob spent an hour working with it, trying various things and researching on the internet. He wanted to call the manufacturer but it was a Sunday – they were closed. He scraped under the slide to see if something was caught there, came up with lots of fur and a pistachio nut. The slide still wouldn’t close. The girls were meowing, LET US OUT, LET US OUT, IF YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE, LET US OUT. Sigh. Finally running out of options until he could contact the manufacturer for help, he closed it manually by overriding the motor controller. Mr. Fix-It did it again.
We departed one hour later at 10 a.m. It was 53 degrees with less haze and more sun. A pretty day. We headed for the border crossing, finally on our way. Things kept flying into the windshield, kami-kazi-style. Large Grasshoppers, maybe Locusts? They were everywhere. Yuk. A plague of Locusts. (Note to self: Look up the difference between locusts and grasshoppers.) The grasshoppers/locusts evidently had attracted lots of birds. They were also flying kami-kazi-style around the RV. We were disturbing the locusts. The birds were hungry. It was bizarre. Did someone put LSD in our breakfast?
We played dodge the locusts and birds all the way to the border, only to find the border crossing was closed on the weekend. Imagine that. Evidently they used to be open everyday but thanks to Covid, borders were shut down and were never reopened fully. Where did that leave us? If we drove back to Val Marie and stayed at the same campground we’d been in last night, we wouldn’t have enough gasoline to make it back tomorrow to Malta. So we parked the RV and tow car by the border, planning to spend the night there. Talk about no hook-ups! We sat in the RV and pondered the situation and the alternatives. The locusts were dive bombing the area. It was getting warmer out, supposed to be in the 80’s today, and surely someone from Customs would come along and tell us we couldn’t park there to spend the night, or maybe someone would come along and rob us. Wait, Rob said, this isn’t the Mexican border, LOL. When we let the girls out they were NOT impressed with the border as a place to stay. We would need to stay fully ready to go in case Customs told us to leave. Camp with the slides in and the Honda still hooked up to us. Everything was still packed up for the drive. We couldn’t even unpack anything in case we were asked to leave on a moment’s notice. We were starting to realize this was not the best solution.
So we turned around and “re-entered” Canada (we hadn’t really left but we’d taken the photos of the U.S. border crossing). We drove back to Val Marie campground, tails between our legs, with some very confused kitties. Back to campsite #1, we unpacked everything and settled in once again. We had lunch. The girls thought we’d lost our marbles.
After lunch, we decided to take the Honda on the gravel road to Grasslands National Park and take the auto Eco-Tour. When we open the RV door to exit, the steps wouldn’t work. Seriously?! Rob fiddled with it for awhile and ended up replacing the controller with a spare one we had bought a couple of months ago. This took about an hour. Our stress levels had risen sky high by then. It didn’t take us long to relax completely. It’d been a long time since we did our slow, snail’s-pace drive on an auto tour at a National Wildlife Refuge. We’d forgotten how much we loved that. Our day got better. We saw a large amount of Prairie Dogs. They were SO cute.
We saw two Coyotes, huge Cows, lots of Hawks and Eagles, and some Antelope and Deer.
The gas situation: we didn’t have enough to make it to Malta since we took the trip to the border and back to Val Marie again. We had decided we would have to backtrack tomorrow morning to the Trans-Canada Highway and get gas, turn around and drive to the border, cross and drive to Malta, making it a very long day for us the next day. When we drove from Val Marie to Grasslands earlier, we passed the diesel gas station and saw a car there hooked up to a hose – a car that wasn’t a diesel user. Could they possibly have regular gasoline, too? We drove through, and guess what? They did. They just didn’t advertise it. What a pain in the you-know-what this all had been, and lots of worrying. Another sigh. We will drive the RV to get gas in Val Marie tomorrow morning after packing up again for the border. The high today was 78 degrees with a nice breeze.
For more detailed information about Val Marie Campground, Val Marie SK, click here.