Saturday August 19, 2006 5:00 am Regina Saskatchewan Sunrise 5:53 Sunset 8:11 Hours of daylight: 14:18 Day 4 of our trip to Virginia

A. Morning Musings

5:00 am It is + 11 C, with a forecast high of + 28 C. Today is a travel day. We will make an early start and should be in the states well before noon. Now the trip begins in earnest, with us primarily in new territory and only occasionally meeting other people that we know. Our destination for tonight is Bismarck, North Dakota. It is 565 km away and the AMA travel web site estimates the travel time as 7 hrs 20 minutes which does not include time for stops for food or gas.

The weather forecast for Bismarck is sunny with a high of 83 F. I quickly googled "conversion Celsius fahrenheit" and now have a website bookmarked that gives a quick conversion. It will be a high of 28 C.

B. Plan

Drive from Regina, Saskatchewan to Bismarck, North Dakota.

C. Actual/Notes

6:40 PM We left Regina at 7 am and took highway # 6 south, soon turning onto #39, which we took to the US border. We were impressed with the huge grain terminals at Weyburn and were surprised to see a large open pit coal mine at Estevan which fueled a large power station. We were also surprised to see a large number of nodding horse-head oil pumps. We were at Estevan at 9 am and at the US border at 9:30 am.

There were also a large number of oil pumps about 15 miles south of the border. We then hit about 20 miles of road constructionon highway #52 just before Bowbells. We saw a number of fields full of sunflowers. The highway then followed the Des Lacs River valley for about 50 miles. This was very scenic with green hills on both sides of us. We decided to stop for lunch at Minot. As we pulled into the parking lot we say a sign indicating that it was 12:00 noon whereas we thought it was 11 am. I think we lost an hour when we crossed the border. We went into a Denny's for a quick lunch but it was 1:20 when we finally left, turning onto highway #83. The place was packed and the staff were having a difficult time handling the crowd. Our waitress said it is always busy on weekends. We filed that information away for future use.

Since we were making good time and since the day was sunny and hot, we decided to take a side trip through an Audubon nature refuge. This took about an hour on a narrow winding gravel road but we were the only car on the road so it was actually quite pleasant. We were disappointed at how few birds we saw. There were Canada Geese everywhere as well as some female Mallard ducks, a few Coots, some Red-Winged Blackbirds and a few American White Pelicans. We saw a particular type of hawk on three different occasions. Fortunately I was able to get a picture of it. The white patch on the rear rump made identification easy: it was a Northern Harrier (a new lifer). We also saw a few black cormorants. A check of the book said that if one saw a cormorant inland, north of the Mexican border, then it had to be a Double-crested Cormorant (another lifer).

As soon as we returned to highway #83 I stopped at Washburn for gasoline. The car took 11.85 gal at a price of $2.99 US per gallon. The total price was $35.41 US which seemed fairly similar to what it would have cost in Canada.

We arrived in Bismarck at 4:30 PM and had no difficulty following our directions to find the Holiday Inn. We then drove a few blocks to a very upscale steak restaurant. Given that we had just had a great steak dinner yesterday, we opted for a gourmet pizza which was just right. The drive today was calm and easy with great weather. Tomorrow should be more of the same.

	Northern Harrier
Double-crested Cormorant	Grain

Here is a photo of a bird that we may have difficulty identifying:

Now to get out our Audubon Society "Master Guide to Birding" and see if we can find something. My first guess is that it is a Brown-headed Cowbird, but it seems to have too long a tail for that to be right. But the bird list for this area lists this bird as very common and the beak seems to be right (relatively conical, short & wide).

For Bismarck, the sun rise was 6:45 am and the sunset was 8:46 PM: total daylight 14 hours 1 minute which is 17 minutes less than in Regina.

D. Reflection