Greetings from Canada

As we wrap up our second week of our trip to Alaska, we've had some challenges but more fun to offset it!

After we left the SPAM musuem, we went to Minneapolis and played tourist for two days. Our favorite site there was Minnehaha Falls Park and we also toured the James J Hill home (look him up; he was a personal friend of JP Morgan!) and went to the Mall of America. After we left there, we ventured to Gonvick MN, where Dean's grandad was buried. We toured Mrs. Olson's Lefse Factory which is in an old schoolhouse and we emerged with a small case of the stuff (which is delicious!).

Our challenge set in as we reached Rugby, MN which is the "Geographic Center of North America." GREAT. We were getting our last slug of cheap gas (at $3.97) in the US, when the motorhome started smoking and stopped dead in its tracks. We lost a fan belt, and after a call for assistance, figured out that the compressor locked up and had to be replaced. This guy manhandled the motorhome into the Chevy dealership (it had lost the power steering) and started looking for parts. We finally decided the parts could only come from the Workhorse folks and they had to come overnight to the closest authorized dealer, which was in Minot. We volunteered to drive our little Honda to Minot to pick up the parts the next morning, so we slept in the parking lot of the dealer that night. Sure enough, the mechanic got to work as soon as we got the parts back and had us on our way (minus air conditioning) by 3:00 p.m. Ya gotta love people in small towns! So, I took this picture of the "geographic center" with Dean and Molly in the foreground and the motorhome stranded in the Chevy lot in the background.

Skip to today; which made up for the challenge. We were riding through Riding Mountain National Park and we happened upon a mama Black Bear with two cubs munching on the side of the road! That makes it all worth it. As we type, we are in Yorkton, SK and well on our way to meeting up with our tour group in a little more than a week.

Stay tuned and be safe!