This year's harvesting season began as we officially left our home in Yorkton on May 12.
We only went as far as Carlyle, SK, to spend a day or so with Marilyn's sister, Marg, and her family, husband Kim and son Gordie. This is the usual "bed and breakfast" that we stay at on the way down, and on the way back home. It's close enough to the border (45 minutes), which allows the chance to get a couple more winks in, rather than getting up before the crack of dawn, and driving for three hours. We are not morning people. Besides, it gives us a chance to get in a visit before leaving the country for four months.
We made Northgate, ND at around 10 am on Monday, May 14, and since we had our paperwork in order (we had taken the grain cart, tractor and header down earlier in April), things went quite smoothly. They did have something new at the US port this trip. We had to drive through an archway made by a crane mounted on a truck, which either x-rayed us, or took pictures of our rigs. We never asked, and once we were through, they waved us on...no contraband on board.
We had a great trip down, the wind pushed us all the way, which was the first time in 14 years. Monday had us making it to Gettysburg, South Dakota by 6pm, covering 375 miles for the day. We had to unload the combine and take the pickup head off to store it at our farmers, since we wouldn't need it until we returned in July. This is the first stop where some of the spring crops get swathed to encourage uniform ripening of the crop and drying down of any weeds. The winter wheat in this area looked good, but was a long way from being in heads. The spring wheat was all up and growing, and the farmers were winding down the corn planting.
Tuesday we had another day of tail wind, but we also had a detour to contend with. At Ft. Thompson, SD, they were fixing the bridge over the Big Bend Dam which crosses the Missouri River, the width restriction was 13 ft. The combine on the trailer was 13'8", so that meant we had to find a detour. For a state that has such concern about overweight vehicles ruining their highway, you think they would have signs letting traffic know the best way to get around the construction...or even that there was a width restriction. If we hadn't gone online to check on construction, we never would have known until we reached the dam, and that would have meant backing up a looonnng way with a big load. The detour we found took us through Chamberlain, SD, and with a short stop to repair one of the straps that held our shop trailer in the back of the grain truck, we had only lost two hours of extra driving time. The drive through Nebraska was as uneventful as it always is, and even with the detour, we made Phillipsburg, Kansas by 7pm after logging 427 miles for the day.
Wednesday we left Phillipsburg, and had another uneventful day of driving through Kansas and Oklahoma. Everything looked so much greener than it had last year, the crops seemed to be a bit behind the normal, but really looked tall and lush, and as long as Mother Nature cooperates, it will be a bumper crop. We made it to our destination of Davidson, OK by 7:30pm covering 423 miles, for a total of 1355 miles from home. We hit the "easy button" when we retired for the night.
