OMG!!!! It had to be the straightest and longest road we have ever driven on. We always thought the road across the Hays Plain in New South Wales was straight and often marvelled that you could see the curvature of the earth, but it has nothing on what we did today.
The boredom of the straight road was bad enough but then we got the weather that we thought we had avoided up until now which was blowing snow, wet, icy and treacherous roads and big gusts of wind. The first half of the trip to Sioux Falls was OK driving with good clear roads and weather. At this stage we had covered over 500k of our 917k and were making great time.
Shortly after Sioux Falls things went to hell in a hand basket. The weather changed for the worse. There was blowing snow, icy roads and big wind gusts. You couldn’t see the surface of the road, so you were not sure if there was ice underneath it. The edges of the road were very poorly defined due to the blowing snow. They had the snowplows out doing their thing the best they could. About 200k from our final destination night fall came and with it a big drop in temperature making the roads like ice skating rinks. The car was sliding around, and it was hard to work out if it was due to the gusty winds or the icy roads or a combination of the two. We were just so pleased to finally arrive at our friends Ilka and Dennis’ place in one piece.
One might hope that as we will now be heading directly south that we will not have to experience any more of this crappy weather.
Toque did amazingly well sleeping nearly the whole way. We did have a time change of the clocks going forward an hour just at the border into Minnesota. Unfortunately, we were unable to get a photo of the welcome sign at the border as the wallies had not put in a layby near it.
We left Rapid City at 7.50am and made it into Rochester at 5.00pm (Rapid City time). Take off three quarters of an hour for our stops which means we covered 917k in about 8.5 hours which is great timing even with the poor weather conditions. The road the whole way was dual carriageway with no roadworks and great surfaces (excluding the blowing snow and ice).
Ilka and Dennis have two Havanese called Ginger and Finnegan. They are a mother and son duo and come from the same breeder in Denver as Toque came from. Ilka use to work as the accountant for Runge in the Denver office and came up to the Calgary office to meet Di as she would be her direct report. We had Ilka stay with us as staying in a hotel was very impersonal and that is where she met Miss Grumble Bum Maples and fell in love with the Havanese breed. Ginger and Finegan are her third and fourth dogs. They are six and four so have a lot more energy than Toque, but she has held her own so far. When you have had an older dog for a while you forget just how much energy the younger ones have and how well they can jump and climb. They are a delight to watch.
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