To those wondering where I have been the past few weeks, I want to confirm that (a) no, I did not break my arm again, and (b) no, I did not quit my job and leave the Battlefords forever.
I did leave the Battlefords, though, but only temporarily. Actually, I was on vacation for three weeks.
In keeping with the vow I made about doing more of the things that I really ought to get around to doing, I finally took my own advice and did something I had never done before: I went to Montana.
Actually, I had wanted to go on a road trip across the border, just to break the monotony. I was considering driving to North Dakota and Â鶹´«Ã½AV Dakota, places I have been to before, but the fact I had never been to Montana, a,k.a. "Big Sky Country," tipped the balance.
(More than that, I was sick of air travel and a road trip was all I could afford.)
This allows me to delve into the topic of Canadians driving to the USA for cross-border shopping.
The big story in the news lately has been about the hordes of Canadians from British Columbia descending on the Costco in Bellingham, Washington to buy hordes of milk by the truckload. So many Canadians have descended on Bellingham that a Facebook page has been set up by disgruntled locals seeking American-only hours - so that the locals can at least park in the parking lot.
Meanwhile, here I am scratching my head. You would think folks in Bellingham would be jumping for joy over the fact that people are coming to their community to shop - especially given the economic problems in the whole rest of the country. But no: they consider enthusiastic paying customers to be a problem.
This, my friends, is why America is in the trouble it is in today. These folks in Bellingham need to quit whining and start building more stores immediately. That is my comment on that.
Now I want to talk about cross-border shopping in general. Every province seems to have its big place for cross-border shopping. For folks in British Columbia, it's Bellingham. For folks in Toronto, it's Buffalo. In Winnipeg, it's Grand Forks.
When most of us in Saskatchewan think of driving to the border, usually our first thought is North Dakota. The main highway routes to the USA head there, the busiest border crossing is there, and when we think of shopping, we think of Minot, the Cross-Border Capital of Saskatchewan.
Minot is where the Saskatchewanians drive to for their cross-border shopping. It's the big destination around here.
I'll tell you what isn't a destination: Montana.
That whole state seems to fly completely under the radar with Saskatchewan folks, in spite of the fact we share much more of the US border with Montana than with North Dakota.
It became quickly apparent on my drive to Montana why the place has such a low-profile with Saskatchewan people. It's because there's nothing there - at least, nothing close to the border.
The main route to Billings was a road that was absolutely in the middle of nowhere. The border crossing I stopped at had no lineup to speak of, and once I crossed the border, there was still nothing for miles. The "Welcome to Montana" sign might as well have read "Welcome to the End of the Earth."
In fact, it took almost an hour just to get from the border to any sort of civilization at all: the town of Malta, which had an impressive-sized Conoco gas station with a convenience store that sold a lot of liquor. Welcome to America.
Driving in Montana was very interesting. To give you an idea: at first you would drive through this flat prairie thinking it was no different from Saskatchewan. But then a big mountain range would show up out of nowhere, then there would be this big river valley and you'd have to drive down and then back up a steep hill to get in and out. By the time I hit Roundup, the terrain featured forests of trees and rock formations that screamed "Wyoming." I surely expected Yogi Bear and Boo Boo to show up on the road to demand a picnic basket.
I was actually very surprised to roll into Billings when it was still daylight out at 6pm, having hit the road early in the morning. I immediately had dinner at Wendy's and visited a Target store, mainly to see what folks up in Canada are in store for when they move up here.
Actually, it was nice to get to a community that was devoid of the cross-border shoppers. You didn't have to fight hordes of Canadians at local shopping malls or the Barnes and Noble, and you didn't have to stand in long lines behind Saskatchewanians wearing all their green-colored clothing at the Applebee's or the Olive Garden for dinner.
But Saskatchewanians could hardly be seen down in the land of Montana Grizzlies. I saw only one green "S" logo the entire trip, and that was in Malta.
In a way I can relate to those poor folks in Bellingham whose stores were overrun with Canadians, because even Canadians can get sick of being around them.
I found it refreshing to be able to drive to a place close to Saskatchewan and be far from the rat race.
Folks here who want the "USA experience" but want something different from the usual Minot lineups and crowds should check Billings out.
It was nice to cross off Montana in the list of states I've visited, and good to see close-up the places I would fly over on my trips to Vegas.
