July 4, 2013

View of the day-Al has a tight corner to make leaving the bins.

We woke up to a good south wind, so after grabbing a snack at McDonalds, we headed out to the bins to get ready for the first move. Al got the big trucks fueled up from the slip tank, then we hooked the straight head behind the pickup. Once the Freightliner was aired up,we were on our way.

The wind really helped and it almost felt like we should have gone further, but we went with our original plan and stopped when we got parked in Stockton...we got nowhere to be, so a two hour drive is far enough.

After taking a pit stop, we struck out on the road again, this time heading west of Stockton towards Col by, about 100 miles. We were hard pressed to see a field that hadn't been combined all the way from Great Bend...no work to be found here.  

There were a lot of combines parked in the area and we were amazed at the width of the tires on this combine.

We got to Colby and stopped at the CaseIH dealer to chat with the ProHarvest guys about the camera issues. After about 30 minutes of working on the problem, Marilyn felt like she had enough things to try to get it working.

As we were leaving, we ran into Lynn and Gerry Prevost, harvesters from Rose Valley, Saskatchewan. Part of the reason for the road trip was to meet up with them for a mid harvest visit...and to take in the fireworks. Marilyn had a bit of shopping to do...pop was on sale for the 4th, so we needed to stock up. After shopping was completed, we went over to the campground to check out Lynn and Gerry's new motorhome...very nice.

We were invited to go out for a supper at Jim Diebert's farm, on the outskirts of Colby. Jim has been a custom harvester for several years and is one of the harvesters being highlighted in the Great American Wheat Harvest Movie documentary.  
It was pot luck and, as they usually are, it was delicious.  We got lots of visiting in and got to meet a lot of new friends.

Part of the promotion of the Great American Wheat Harvest Movie was a visit from Teresa Scanlon, Miss America 2011.  She has been a big part of promoting the film and has made several appearances on behalf of the documentary as you can see from the promo.

 
A lot of the crews that were there had their pictures taken with Teresa...the guys seemed to really enjoy that! This is the Prevost crew.

We said our goodbyes and went back to Lynn and Gerry's camp spot to watch the fireworks, which were being set of right next to the campers in the fair ground.  

It was a great display...always too short...and there were a lot of "side shows" with purchases from the various fireworks sales tents that were set up around the city.

Once all the action was over, it was time to head back to Great Bend...a 170 mile drive.

We stopped at Sonic for our usual nightcap. Big mistake...we waited forever...30 minutes for two shakes. So now we were really behind and Marilyn hadn't brought the laptop, so the blog didn't get uploaded...we didn't get home until 2am.

But the bonus is two blogs today...