We got up to fog. Very thick fog and waited patiently for it to burn off. Finally we gave up waiting and headed out on the road.
It did get better and was pretty much gone by the time we got half way to the border. I was relieved as driving in fog is not my favourite thing to do.
The landscape in this part of Saskatchewan is very hilly. Not the roads, but the areal around them. Coal is mined here and the hills that we saw were man made - the soil dug out of the mines.
By comparison, North Dakota was pretty flat. At least for the first part of the trip. There was a mixture of farm land with gas and oil wells mixed in. One of the ranches had a sign telling the world that it was a happy place.
North Dakota is only starting to show it's fall colours and it made for a pretty scenic drive.
We were about 90 minutes into our drive in North Dakota when we went down a big hill and over Del Lac Lake. This would start a trip trough what i call the valley of the moguls. These are a series of hills on either sides of the road and go on for miles and miles.
Last year i mentioned in my blog about numbers carved into the hills, particularly through the first part of this valley. I tried to find out information about it but came up blank with my searches. This year I took a picture of my GPS so that I could make a more specific search and I finally had my answer.
It has been a tradition since the late 1950's early 1960's for the graduating class from a local high school dig out and place boulders in the shape of their graduating year on the side of the hills near Kenmare North Dakota. When there is a class reunion, the group will go back up the hill to repaint the rocks. Pretty cool.
We continued driving through this valley for quite a while. It was amazing to see farms that managed to cultivate land and raise animals among the hills. At one spot we saw cows on a really steep slope of a hill. The pictures don;t seem to make it look so steep, but trust me it was.
There was one farm that had placed statues of animals on the hills around the farm. I managed to capture the Big Horned Sheep they had on display.
As we drove out of the valley and headed east the town signs became more eye catching .
The land once more leveled out and we passed a town with a pioneer village and museum that dominated the west end of the small town.
it started to get much colder as we drove east and we started seeing snow on the ground. We hoped it was just residue from the storm that went through a couple of days ago and not a sign of what was to come.
So far we were having a great day. Just 3 hours left until we were at our campground where there was a pool, hot tub and warm showers waiting for us. Then it happened.
Now before I can tell the story in a way that would be understood I need to give a bit of back ground. First of all, the towing rig we have it top of the line and has an electronic braking system that talks to the Jeep and uses it's brakes when we are slowing down or stopping. We had a problem with this system drainng the battery on the Jeep when we were on our way to Grande Prairie and really, it just meant we had to start the Jeep when we stopped to get gas or rested up to make sure the batter stayed charged. Occasionally the battery would go flat and we got the generator out and recharged it enough to start and then we would let it run. Rick bought and installed a part that should have fixed it for the return trip, but for some unknown reason it did not work. So we were back to starting the Jeep occasionally to charge the battery. Not really a big deal. If the battery on the Jeep ran out of juice, that meant the brakes did not work and we could always feel that push, so we knew that we had to stop.
OK so we had just gone through Martin North Dakota and, about 5 kms down the road we passed a farm tractor. When we pulled back in we felt the Jeep bump kind of hard so we pulled over at a gas station at Harvey ND, about another 5 kms down the road. The situation was a little more complicated today because the Jeep was now locked, even though we kept in unlocked so Rick took a hanger and headed to the back of the RV to break in and get the batter charger out. He was back in the cab in just a second yelling "The Jeep is gone! the Jeep is gone!" This took a second to soak in and I repeated "The Jeep is gone??" Stunned does not come close to describing how I felt in that moment. In a panic, we turned around and headed back down the highway. We knew it had happened when we passed the tractor so we raced back that way. sure enough we found the pale farmer just crossing back to his tractor and our Jeep in the grass on the opposite side of the road. It stopped just 20 feet from a telephone pole.
So what exactly happened? Rick bought the top of the line towing gear and some safety gear that would catch the vehicle in the unlikely event that it came loose.
Now had it come lose or disconnected where the towing bar sat on the ball, (circled in red below) the safety systems would have happened and the Jeep would not have completely disconnected and gone off-roading. What happen to us was the entire towing hitch receiver on the RV broke off so the hitch, bar and all the safety systems left with the Jeep.
When the jeep broke off it passed the tractor (and a very surprised farmer), crossing the opposite lane of the highway and went into the field. At some point the hitch bounced off the hood of the Jeep and then hit the ground, wedging under the jeep and ultimately stopping it.
In the picture below you can see where the hitch bounced off the hood and what is left of it sitting on the front bumper.
So the farmer who had been driving the tractor called his son, who came over and he called another friend who owned the tow truck company. He was out of town, but his brother was available to help out. We seemed to be the day's excitement for the little town and several cars came and went, some with entire families in them. The tow truck finally pulled up, but the driver didn't bring the flatbed truck so he left again. When he arrived there was someone else with him, maybe the brother who had been out of town.
Just about the time the tow truck arrived to pull the Jeep out a Sheriffs deputy also arrived and made a report.He was a really nice young guy and looked every thing over and took down the usual information.
They towed the Jeep to their yard and it was left there over night. There was a small campground right around the corner that, although closed for the year, the owner let us stay at. There was only electricity there but that would do in a pinch. The tow truck guys said they could hook us up with a good welder tomorrow so that we could get the tow hitch reattached to the RV. With all that settled we set up our RV and sat for a long time in shocked silence.
After a while I got up and made dinner and we talked t out a bit. I had already called our campgrounds and pushed our dates out and now we needed to find a replacement tow bar that could be shipped over night to us in the middle of North Dakota. We made a plan. We talked about how lucky we were that there were no cars coming the other way that the Jeep could have hit head on. It is a busy highway so we dodged a huge bullet. At 11:00 pm we decided to try to get some sleep. Neither one of us slept much.
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