We have made our way through thunderstorms I was certain would result in a flash flood in St. Criox Falls, WI, non-stop rain in Voyageurs National Park, Minn and now....the prairies....
The praires, it all started in Winnipeg, Mannitoba. Here we got our first day of sunshine. I thought "I love the praries" (though I knew the love would not last)...down town is cute a big city with that small city feel. Getting an early start decided to make the long haul to Regina, Saskatchewan. Well lets detour becuase the prairies are flooded and the trans continental highway 1 is shut down. South we go in search of camp. The flooding is crazy, nearly every field is flooded resulting in lakes filled with new wild life, really it is tragic to see houses roads farms all under water. A woman of 102yrs told a women we met that in all her life she has never seen anything like this.
Numerous detours followed in a town Weyburn where the entire town was shut down. It was awful we were starving, now we have been driving 7 hours. Onward, hardly any civilization for hundreds of miles, at last we take a gamble, betting that Dunnet Park will not be flooded, and go 30miles more into the land of nothing. We won! We pitch our tent on some dryish land in the home of more black flies and mosquitos then I have seen throughout this journey combined, must be all that rain huh? We take control of the situation with a bug bomb of sorts and start our fire with a glass of whiskey in hand enjoying the clear skies and warm sun...until the stroms roll through and in they came for the entire evening. A tick found on Hyde led us to do a quick tick check, yup, Hyde has two and Henry three, us humans none.
I wake this morning at six am and for no good reason I lift up the sleeping bag a little and would you look at that, it is a tick! I silently freak out in my head, grab the closest weapon, a lighter, and I burn it. Dee wakes up and upon looking at me she knew something was wrong. "Why are you awake" "You have to pee" "Do you have a headache"...no, I say, you dont want to know and I tell her of my tick discovery. We both get up and do a body check....eeeeek Dayna asks me to look at something on her rear and sure enough on her ass is a tick munching on her skin and snacking on her blood, I look down and I scream there is one on my thigh. Dayna is screaming I am sceaming, quite the site let me tell you, even the dogs were getting upset. We calm down and I take the tweezers grab that sucker by the head and yank it out and snap its body. Eeeewwwweee....thats it we packed up in the rain, got soaking wet, and split.
Heading to Alberta to continue the endless battle with the elements and bugs!
Caio, Andrea
