{"id":20180,"date":"2013-06-15T02:34:01","date_gmt":"2013-06-15T07:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca\/?p=20180"},"modified":"2016-09-21T15:18:12","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T12:18:12","slug":"a-long-good-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/a-long-good-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"A Long Good Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I went to sleep around midnight to the sound of pouring rain and awoke at 5:00 this morning to the same. I managed to squeeze in another fitful hour and a half of shut eye before giving up.<\/p>\n<p>The rain varied between torrential and drizzling during the half hour or so it took to finish packing and load up the truck. I pulled out just past 7:00 with an ETA of 5:00 pm.<\/p>\n<p>I got fuel and coffee in Assiniboia, then headed west on high 13. Just shy of Cadillac I got my sign that I really wasn&#8217;t meant to make this journey with Miranda. A truck in the opposing lane marked oversize load approached me waving madly that I needed to pull over. There was no shoulder and I made it to a country lane as a house wider than the road bore down on me. I have no idea how I would have gotten Miranda out of that lane way without having to back her onto the highway to turn around.<\/p>\n<p>The weather was still miserable when I made a pit stop in Swift Current, although I had seen a few promises of clearing.<\/p>\n<p>I hit Medicine Hat at noon and was looking forward to a sushi lunch, only to discover the restaurant doesn&#8217;t open till 3:00 on Fridays. Oh, well. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll have another chance for sushi on this trip.<\/p>\n<p>Medicine Hat&#8217;s road planners must have been drunk as the city is a bear to get through as it has service roads and odd turns. I managed to rejoin highway one, but got off almost immediately to get gas and coffee.<\/p>\n<p>Just past Brooks, a massive hail storm hit. All but one driver in a long column pulled over to let it pass. This was good hail, small enough not to be damaging, but big enough to really clean the truck!<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of Moya, she hasn&#8217;t had a good leg stretch since we went to Mexico in February and she&#8217;s been cranky on our few runs to town. Not worrisomely, just showing signs of her advanced age. Once we got a few miles under our belt today, she started purring. I don&#8217;t thing I&#8217;ll ever get sick of doing long hauls with her.<\/p>\n<p>The Badlands soon followed and were incredibly lush, not a word I would have associated with them!<\/p>\n<p>I landed in Stettler at 5:00 and found Donna and Ken&#8217;s mansion without any trouble. Note that anything bigger than a 45&#8242; class A motorhome with full slides counts as a mansion in my eyes now. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>We gabbed for a bit, then Donna and I headed out to get supper fixings. I decided to pay for and make supper myself, which meant grilling prepared garlic bread, slicing a pre-roasted chicken, opening a bottle of dressing for a prepared salad, and then doing the dishes. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Donna and I gabbed till way too late and then I availed myself of the luxurious appointments of the guest bathroom.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s really late and we have a full day tomorrow so I&#8217;d better sign off. I&#8217;m just so glad I&#8217;m here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went to sleep around midnight to the sound of pouring rain and awoke at 5:00 this morning to the same. I managed to squeeze in another fitful hour and a half of shut eye before giving up. The rain varied between torrential and drizzling during the half hour or so it took to finish [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1041,1053,1523,1525,632,4,1248,635,5,807,1522,1379,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alberta","category-assiniboia","category-brooks","category-cadillac","category-canada","category-haven","category-medicine-hat","category-north-america","category-rving","category-saskatchewan","category-stettler","category-swift-current","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}