October 2

View of the day-Loaded up and ready to roll home…sort of…from Balcarres.

Marilyn had to start the day early to make sure she was back at the camper in Balcarres by noon. Al wanted to get every thing loaded and the combine and header moved out to a friend’s farm south of Stockholm. The yard is right along the #9 highway and is on the way south for us and it shaves about 20 miles off the trip…like 20 miles means anything to us after the summer.

After a couple of stops in Yorkton, Marilyn left for Balcarres…a perfect warm sunny morning with the sun behind her…too good to be true? You bet. For starters, about 25 miles from Yorkton, tracing her tracks back to Balcarres through Ituna (which is 55 miles straight west of Yorkton), she realized…that wasn’t necessary. The field we were working on was 25 miles south of Ituna…makes sense to go to Yorkton that way. Coming back…well…she was going back to the camper which was right off the #10 a road that goes straight to Yorkton…could have saved a few miles…no big deal.

When we had gone to Yorkton last week, we went through Ituna and had commented on the convenience store that was closed when we passed it. On the way through Ituna today, Marilyn saw the store and thought she was on the right road, so she forged south. Something was amiss, the first clue was the “highway” was gravel…not unusual in this nightmare road area…but it was also narrower…hmmm. After driving south, thinking the road would eventually run into the 310, it was time to rethink the situation…a lot of the roads don’t go directly straight through…yes, she knew there were no short cuts in this part of the province...and she wasn’t looking for one. Although finding the highway would be nice.

If you’ve ever been a passenger and noticed all the nice scenery, but not absorbed the road, then had to return on the same road and thought…what the heck?!? Now, it seemed the highway must be east of the road she was on, so she took the next good road going east…it should only be a couple or three miles…right? Six miles later she was cursing the fact that the little GPS handheld that she had gotten Al for Christmas was in the truck and not in the car with her…but, wait just one minute…she had the laptop and another GPS setup with her in the car! After stopping the car, hooking it up and waiting for the signal (just like waiting with bated breath for your winning ticket to be drawn)…oh, the anticipation…there was the green dot on the map showing where she was. Wow…never even imagined she was that far out…the #310 was 12 miles west of where she sat…hmmm. With the help of Microsoft Mary, she got back to the #310, and back to the camper...an extended trip, but what beautiful scenery on such a fine day.

Back at the camper we realized there were two closed convenience stores in Ituna, a block apart…the second one was on the right road. We took the pickup up to where the combine was going to get loaded, switched headers…the header lift worked first try. We think the header lift problem might be a hydraulic problem…like not enough oil in the reservoir…we’ll find out when we unload it. We then got the combine trailer from the first field and found a solid spot to load it without having the trailer lift cylinder pushing through the soft dirt to China. After getting the combine loaded, strapped down and all systems tested, we left for Balcarres to have lunch before striking out for Stockholm.

The trip was anything but smooth…the highway is beyond horrible…but at least we didn’t have any breakdowns and we got to the farmyard around 4:30pm…lots of daylight left. We took the back roads to Grayson to pick up our accumulated mail and have a visit with Al’s step dad, who collects it for us all summer. The discussion on how things have changed so much over the years…who has moved away…all the abandoned yards, fields gone to grass and weeds…changes...a lot of “I remember when” stories.

Back at the camper, preparations were started to get the house ready to move back home to Yorkton for good. Everything will get unloaded and it will get winterized and tucked into its resting spot until inspection time comes in January.

Seems a long time away…