Saturday March 1st

There's a rule that all good things must come to an end. If I ever find the person who made that rule, I'm gonna have a few words with the SOB. I mean, why not make all BAD things come to an end, and let the good ones last forever? Wouldn't that be a more reasonable rule?

We (Gab, Mojo, and I) arrived safe and relatively sound back in Lamont about 9:00 last night. Rather than go the usual route from Coutts home, we took highway 36 pretty much due north from Warner all the way to Viking, then cut over to Tofield on highway 14, up to Chipman on 834, and then across to Lamont on 15. Streets and Trips showed this as the shortest route home, and I have no doubt that it was. It failed to take into account the miles and miles of bad frost heaves, however, or the thousands (OK, dozens) of stock haulers insistent on travelling at 130k+. Most seemed rather surly at my 100-105k speed - at least there were no thank-you flashes of the backup lights or 4-ways when I signalled over to the shoulder and slowed to let them get by as quickly as possible. The only thank you flash I got was from a regular trucker pulling a box trailer.

On the bright side, the number of stock trucks on the road must mean that the price of cows is good, right? So the ranchers'll be happy. Hah hah.

So anyway, an uneventful trip from Helena home. Even the border guard had a good sense of humour when I pulled up with a cheat sheet of receipt totals, licence plate numbers, quantities and types of meat, dairy, and produce items in the unit... then had to dig for a minute or so when he asked to see my ID. OK, so I was ALMOST well prepared.

Highway 36 is flat flat flat, except for the occasional precipitous plunge in and out of a river valley and the mini mountainous terrain of frost heaves. If you go I recommend new shocks beforehand and, if cow prices are good, fill up with premium as you'll need the extra octane to keep ahead of the truckers.

The weather co-operated nicely today, and we (Wendy and I) were able to get the motorhome unloaded in nice +6C temperatures today. There's a little more snow here than when I left - Wendy says there was lots and a lot of it melted, but she has no pictures or other proof so the jury's out on that one - and it looks like what's here might be gone within the next couple months. So Alberta is EXACTLY like Utah. Except for the forecast of -17C or some
foolish thing tonight.

So now I'm enjoying the last remnants of the trip: a glass or two of duty-free rum ($11 for a 40 pounder, if you can believe it, and REAL rum too - not that prettied-up stuff that passes for rum below the 49th) mixed with some Sam's cola from Vegas and ice cubes made with good water from Phoenix, munching some potato chips from Montana. That's about it for this particular journey, except that over the next few days I want to pull a little stats table together & post it. If you're interested, check back in a week or so, and if I don't have anything posted yet email
me a reminder. I get forgetful sometimes.

I've heard that everyone else has made it home safe and sound (or at least, I haven't heard that they haven't), so that's definitely something for which we should all be thankful.