Tim & Vanessa Lorentzen Family!

Here is the story.  March definitely came in like a Lion!

Jasper and I left a little after 6 and had an uneventful trip out to Casselton (170 miles) and unloaded the snowmobiles and took off around 9:30.  We were going to go around the north loop of the trail (about 100 miles it looked like) turned out we went 121 with back tracking and side tracking and all!  A lot of miles!

We arrived at Arthur and gassed up and had lunch.  I thought at the time that the El Tigre was a little excessive on fuel usage.  We then took off for the afternoon.  After riding some awesome drifts along some tree rows (it was mostly fields and section line and along some tree rows - the ones running east/west had incredible drifts on the south side of them) we made it - almost to Argusville when the El Tigre ran out of gas.  We were about 3 miles from Argusville so we both rode in on the Jag.  And found out they had no gas (the pump was frozen).  Harwood was 6 miles away.  I went back in to the bar and asked about gas and the lady running the place said she would turn the pump on and I could try it but she said there would be luck if there was 3 gallons in it.  The pump worked!  I got 2.5 gallons and we went back for the El Tigre.  Got back to Argusville and decided to try and figure out why it was using so much gas - found a leaky fuel line (it had too much slack and was rubbing against the drive shaft) there was plenty of length to cut it off and re-routed it so it would not rub again.  The unfortunate thing was that we had leaked a large amount out already and so ran out again just inside Harwood.  Got to the Cenex and got more gas.  By this time it was getting late so we took off from Harwood heading towards Mapleton and then back to Casselton.

It started to pelt us with ice pellets and that was not much fun BUT that was way better than the HUGE snowflakes that followed.  Stick on your glasses so you could not see.  We lost the trail once but found it again and got to Mapleton.  I sure wanted to just follow the Interstate back to Casselton but there is a river that you cross so we stuck to the trail.  By the time we got to Casselton it was dark and snowing heavily.  You have to wind through town and then out in the country and backtrack to get back to where we started and by that time I was so tired and could hardly see that I was sure we had taken a wrong turn.  We flagged down a passing car and the lady told us we were on the right road and a mile from the truck stop!  It was good to see the old truck sitting there and drink some of my good coffee I had in the Thermos.  The cold sandwiches were good too!  We loaded up (BTW the El Tigre made it all that way with out running out - we did check in Mapleton though!) and took off.

That was where things got interesting.  The highway was glare ice and it was snowing like mad!  Speeds were down to 20 MPH in places.  We were driving Jaspers truck (the good old 85 Super cab - 2 wheel drive) so things were a bit dicey.  By Jamestown the visibility had cleared up but it was glare ice all the way home.  Took 4 hours to go 170 miles.