Winnipeg is not spelled like Winnebago

The first day of traveling has ended, and I am now in a hotel room in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I will get some more pictures up as soon as possible, however I left my camera out in the car and don't feel like going to get it at the moment. Joe took most of the pictures. I also didn't want to take a lot of pictures while I was driving, so tomorrow (as we begin the trek across Canada) I'll be sure to take a lot.

The drive began around 7 this morning as I left home on my way to rendezvous with my friend Joe in the Twin Cities so he could drive the rest of the way up with me. It was an interesting drive, as up until I went to Oklahoma, the 5-hour drive from home to Minneapolis-Saint Paul was the longest drive I had known. I had never driven it myself before, but was looking forward to doing it now with several 13-hour runs from Oklahoma to home and back under my belt. The drive felt like a breeze. I made it all the way up on one tank of gas (even with the car completely full of my stuff) and with no real delays. Got up there around noon and was able to meet up with Joe (and his girlfriend Megan) in Eden Prairie at a Cub Foods store near the interstate. (Apparently they closed the Cub Foods store in Beloit, so I was amazed to see a Cub Foods again. There also was a Don Pablo's that was still operating by the Cub foods, which is stranger seeing as all the Don Pablo's in Rockford AND Oklahoma have closed...apparently this is where my childhood escaped to...). After meeting up with Joe and Megan and saying our goodbyes, I continued with Joe northwest on I-94.

The furthest I have been on I-94 is just northwest of Saint Cloud to Saint John's and Saint Benedict's University, so I quickly was into territory I had not been to before. I somewhat expected as we took I-94 further and further northwest that we would get into lake country and there would be lakes and hills and trees and all like near Brainerd. Not so. Not so at all. The further northwest we got, the more and more it looked like the hilly farmland of southwest Wisconsin, and as we really got out there, it got flatter until it looked like downstate Illinois flat which...I did not expect. Going north means lakes and trees to me, not open cornfields. So that proved to be several hours of dull driving... As Joe put it, the most interesting thing to look at there was his can of nuts...


By five in the evening we had arrived in Fargo, North Dakota and the Red River of the North. Not to be confused with the Oklahoma-Texas Red River (of the south). For a river that is supposed to be flooding its banks all the time, it looked very peaceful to me. By the time we go out to Fargo, it was clear that we had gotten back to the Great Plains again, something I thought I was getting away from by getting out of Oklahoma! Flat farmland out west as far as the eye could see. The cities of Fargo and Grand Forks further north are clearly what I call "Plains" cities. They seem to rise up in the middle of nowhere on the plains with no suburbs or anything buffering them. It goes from farmland to urban city with random tall buildings and back to farmland in a just a few minutes as you drive through. North of Fargo Joe was on the lookout for a TV transmitting tower that, until the Burj Dubai was built a few years ago, used to be the "tallest thing in all of man's creation", standing nearly a half a mile tall. We saw it from a distance as we traveled up I-29 and Joe got a photo or two of it, though it's nearly impossible to see in those pictures. Otherwise, everything was just empty. Empty fields, no cities, no reason for the highway to be here. However, the speed limit jumps to 75, so we got through there pretty quick.

As we approached the Canadian border, the number of farmers who had started fires in their fields to burn down the remaining crop stubble increased. The air was filled with plumes of smoke as we drove on. There wasn't much else to look at...

At the Canadian border, we were forced to wait behind some farmer towing a large piece of farm machinery or mower deck that didn't look like it could fit through their customs booths. Several times the guy nearly ran that machinery into the trucks waiting in the next lane. When it got to be our turn, they asked the usual questions, beginning with, "What business brings you to Canada?" to which I responded, "We are driving to Alaska." This got raised eyebrows both times I responded that way to different people. As I somewhat expected, with my back seat completely full of random bags and boxes, we were asked to pull into a garage so they could do a thorough inspection of the car while we waited. Joe and I sat on these two chairs watching while they took out all of our bags one by one and searched them, as well as the car itself. I was amazed that they went through and turned on our laptop computers (and was wondering if they could figure out my dual-boot Linux and Windows operating systems) and also turned on and went through the photos on our digital cameras. It was quite the thorough search. However, as I had been driving since the Twin Cities, I enjoyed the break. After a good 15 or 20 minutes, they finally said we were good to go and we grabbed all our stuff and continued on. I must say that the guy who inspected my laptop bag re-packed it in a far more efficient way than I had originally packed it. I was very happy about that.

We still had another hour and a half drive up to Winnipeg after that, and even though it was around 8 PM when we got out of the border crossing, we had sunlight all the way until we arrived at our hotel in Winnipeg around 9:30. The speed limit on the highway was 100 kph, which worked out to around 63 mph. I'm assuming this will be the speed posted for most of our travels through Canada. The flat farmland to the west continued, I think becoming even flatter as we approached Winnipeg. I was completely taken by surprise--Winnipeg is a plains city. It has flat farmland going right up to the outskirts of the urban area. I had always pictured it, since it was further north than Minnesota, as a great city of the North Woods, filled with lakes and surrounded by vast pine forests. Not so at all! Definitely farmland. It's got a decent enough skyline, though.

The flatness to the west, though...that's what we have to cross tomorrow.