Geocaching from Sea to Sea: Day 11 - Regina, Saskatchewan to Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Tuesday 14th June (Central Time without daylight savings)

We were up early as the sun was shining and we can't adjust to all the hour changes. It was useful though as we had forgotten the hotel had a guest laundry and so we had time to wash and dry our clothes!

The prairies still looked amazing bathed in sunshine with their gently rolling hills, scattered farms and cows grazing peacefully - we even saw bison at one time.

Today's drive wasn't as far as yesterdays and we had spotted a trail of geocaches at Swift Current (what a lovely name). This was to be our introduction to 'Power Caching'. The idea is you have 4 people in a car, one to drive, one to navigate, one to rest and one to jump out and get the caches. This enables people to get thousands of caches in a relatively short time and explains why some people have found so many. We are not really into the numbers but it was quite fun to collect 20 in a short space of time - much to the interest of cows nearby.

We listen to local radio stations in the car and Swift Current kept mentioning huge thunderstorms. All we could see was blue sky. But then on the horizon clouds began to appear.

All in all a prairie thunderstorm has to go down as one of the most terrifying experiences in my life - and I think Gary will agree.

It went from dry to complete downpour, so that the windscreen wipers couldn't work, in a couple of seconds. We only knew where we were on the road because of the white line on the passenger side of the car and that was difficult to see.

We didn't know what to do but then we spotted another person who had pulled off to the side of the road - we pulled up behind them and waited in panic in case someone didn't see us and rear ended us. Huge lorries were still speeding by, I have no idea how they knew where they were going. But then someone else pulled over behind us and we felt a bit safer.

I guess the whole storm didn't last longer than 10 minutes but left us both quivering wrecks and having seen a lot of rest stops before this, of course, it seemed to take ages before we found another one which allowed us to pull properly off the road and to relax! Thomas and Pam, if you see a storm building up when you are on the prairies - get off the road and wait it out!

That did put a damper on the rest of our drive today.

We have left Saskatchewan behind and have moved into Alberta - only one more province to go! Tonight we are staying in Medicine Hat - what a cool name. It's the English translation for the Blackfoot word for the eagle feather headdress the medicine man would have worn.

Distance so far - 4551km from Rose Bay!

Such a great name!

Yep - that would be a giant moose!

That prairie road continues on.

More farms surrounded by trees to protect them from the constant wind.

We saw lots of lakes today.

Another 'big thing' - a Piping Plover.

Chaplin is the home of a bird observation point, the birds are attracted by the tiny shrimp in the nearby lakes. We saw a real American Avocet which was exciting.