Kreider Khronicles

We started our drive nice and early. The goal is to drive 850 miles, ending up in North Dakota and only have an hour of driving till the boarder. Just because of not knowing how long it will take to get through the border.

Not long into the drive we crossed into Wisconsin. Four states down. Three more to go! First thing we noticed was the price of gas. For everyone in PA you will be wishing gas was this cheap, the cheapest gas we saw was $3.79 a gallon. Super thankful for that price when we are filling up every 200ish miles.

The very beginning of Wisconsin was cool. Lots of different rock formations and passed Camp Douglas. Fun fact: Wisconsin has cranberry farms. One town has a cranberry festival in September. We crossed the Saint Croix River which was still mostly frozen and entered Minnesota. Another state down!

About an hour and a half into Minnesota we were officially under 3000 miles till North Pole. Yay! Not much else to note about Minnesota. I took a nap due to being so bored with nothing to look at. One interesting thing is that State Troopers have maroon cars. By 3 o’clock we reached North Dakota. Last state before the border!

Once again everything was flat. You could see for miles with the except of the occasional rolling hills. The one thing to look at was the size of the feed mills and grain bins. I still can’t belive how big they were. Some are designed to have the railcars come right under and have the feed drop down. The trains that run in North Dakota aren’t small ones. We saw one that all we could see was the end. Couldn’t quite see the beginning.

The drive was going smoothly. We were well on track to get to Portal, North Dakota by night fall. To be ready to cross the border right away. Until we needed gas. We could have used a gas can in the bed of the truck but decided to play it safe and stop. That is when things took a turn. The lot was gravel and a small stone piece punctured the one trailer tire just enough that we had a slow leak. Tired to see if an auto shop was open to put a new tire. Everything was closed, expect we got lucky and found a tractor supply. They weren’t able to fix if and didn’t have the right tire. But they did have tire slime. So we purchased it and tired to use it to temporarily fix the hole. Turns out we got the one for truck tires not trailer tires. So Benjamin ran back in and got the trailer tire slime. Got it to work enough to patch the hole and limp along.

At this point we hadn’t eaten dinner and weren’t sure if the patch would hold. I got in contact with uHaul to see if they could have someone come out and put a new tire on. Since we were still driving they needed us to find a place to stop at. We decided it was best to call it a night and find a hotel. We stopped at Minot, North Dakota. Our hope was to have someone that uHaul found to come out tonight to fix the tire. But because everyone was closed, nobody would come out. So we decided to just have someone come out first thing to fix it. Today didn’t got as planned. Only got 800 miles in but it is all part of the adventure.