 Good morning everyone. It's time to get started again. We're gonna get all blue warmed up. We're headed up north, past Thompson Manitoba. We're going further north than I've ever been before, again. Beating my record again, in winter. Again. So it's gonna be a little cold up there. I gotta put my winter front on the truck. It's gotten pretty warm down in Southern Manitoba that I didn't need this. But we're gonna need this, trust me. We're going to a small settlement. I don't even know if you call it a town. Legally, I guess it'd be a town. A town of Gillum, Manitoba. Way up the Nelson River. Pretty close to the Hudson's Bay. It's supposed to get down to minus 31 at night up there. And we're supposed to get some snow when we get to Thompson tonight. I'm hoping to get to Thompson. I'm gonna go pick up my load in Winnipeg. Gonna go grab my trailer and then pick up my load in Winnipeg. And then make my way up there. Thompson is about eight hours or so. I'm gonna get there tonight. And then tomorrow I'd like to get all the way, the rest of the way up to Gillum, which is another 400 and some kilometers, or 350 kilometers, about four hours. We'll get there, hopefully, deliver. And get back to Thompson at least tomorrow. And then the next day, if we haven't gotten further than Thompson, the next day, get back home. I thought the coldest parts of winter were over. I was right if I stayed south, but winter's not done with me yet. I might be done with winter. Winter's not done with me. So let's go face it. See what it has to say. Come on, old blue. It's time to wake up. Tow truck hit the ditch, or the tow truck got stuck pulling something out of the ditch. What? Well, that's gotta be embarrassing. How did that even happen? Like, what did you back into the ditch and... weird. Ah, stuff happens, I guess, eh? We're on our way up to Gillum, Manitoba. Way up north, 1,066 kilometers from this point right here, about 630 miles or so. Further north, I've ever been in my own province. We're gonna unload there tomorrow morning. And then on our way back, we're gonna unload in Thompson, Manitoba. Maybe grab a reload and come back south. It's gonna be cold up there. We've been enjoying sort of like spring-tight, mild temperatures here in the southern part of the province. Up north, it's still wintertime. It's gonna drop down to minus 30 overnight when we get up there. Hooray. If you know anything about Manitoba, you know that there's one road that takes us north. If you're going all the way north. It's Highway 6. It meets up with the northwest side of the perimeter here in Winnipeg. And it goes all the way up to Gillum. Well, not the 6. The 6 goes up to Thompson. And from north of Thompson, we take, what is that again? It was that really bad highway that we took on the way to Split Lake when I went on that ferry ride. We got stuck there in the winter storm, beginning of winter. That really rough road. I agreed to go down that road now because I'm hoping that with the winter snow and ice on it that it's gonna be a lot smoother. We'll see what happens. But it's a very remote road. It goes up to our northern towns and communities up there which is basically based around hydroelectric power. There's a whole bunch of hydro dams up there that power Manitoba. And we actually sell a lot of that electricity to Minnesota as well. It all comes from up where we're going. A whole bunch of dams up there. Oh, that's a bright sun. We're here at the truck stop at the corner of... Well, close to the corner of Highway 60 and Highway 6. This is the one where they have a big lot, but they don't clear it. So there's not really any parking here. I wonder if they do that on purpose so that we don't park here overnight. Like all of this here could be parking, right? But there's really only enough just a little more than enough to get to the fuel pumps back there. You see that guy pulling around there. And you can sort of park a truck or two off to the side just out of the way. It's interesting. Because all of this here is all parking lot too. It's just piled full of snow. Oh, that sun is right in my face. So he's going to park along there. I'm going to go around and park behind him. The last time I was here, I don't know if it's still there, but behind the building was a mountain of trash bags. Which would make me very nervous staying here because that would attract bears. And other wildlife at night. Let's see if it's still there. I don't see any tracks leading out of there. This is bumpy. Let's see right beside that truck. Oh no, still there. Big mountain of trash bags. Why is that there? Yeah, that's probably a regular visitation point for the local bear population and wolves and you know all kinds of other raccoons or whatever else they have up here. So I wouldn't feel comfortable staying the night here. But I am going to go into their convenience store and see what they got in there. Just going to grab a coffee or something. I have coffee along with me that I can make in here. I just kind of want to treat myself a little bit. So rough. You just have to creep around here. Otherwise you get thrown right out the window. Yeah, like I said last time. Trying to warm up my spaghetti there. My spaghetti is frozen. My wife made me. Had it underneath the heater on the floor here. Trying to, it's frozen solid. This is a nice little pit stop. You can get gasoline and some diesel fuel. I think the diesel fuel islands work. I've never seen anyone fueling there though. So they might not actually work. Because this is an SO gas stop. But the diesel fuel islands have no markers on them. They may not work. So you can get gasoline here if you're in your car. In a convenience store. I'll go in there and give them some of my business. Then we're going to keep going up north. The skies are clear here, right? Not a cloud in the sky. But further north of here, it starts snowing between Grand Rapids and Thompson. Closer to Thompson. If you're familiar with the area, right where Highway 6 turns towards Thompson, north of Grand Rapids. It's still not snowing there. But it's snowing like crazy up in Thompson. They're expecting about 15 centimeters of snow. Which is about a little over a foot, right? No, half a foot of snow. Six inches. So it's not that bad. But it's supposed to peter off into the evening and then be gone by tomorrow sometimes. So I'm kind of dragging my feet a little bit today. Kind of taking my time. I want that storm to pass over Thompson as much as possible. As long as I get there tonight at a decent time before midnight, I'll be fine. I'm going to deliver part of my load in Thompson tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. So it's not a big rush. Not a big rush. We're cautiously watching the weather forecast as we get closer. We should be alright. Alright, so inside the store was actually very nice. It was nice and clean. A lot of open space. They had like a little restaurant thing at the back. I believe where they sold crispy chicken. Bathrooms were clean. Did I say that? And the people were friendly. The outside of the building and the parking lot is questionable with the garbage and the snow not properly cleared. But the store inside looked presentable. And I'd say if you need a pit stop on your way up or down from Thompson, that'd be a good place to stop. I just wouldn't plan on staying the night there. Got myself some snacks. You can see they got quite a bit of snow, but thankfully us dragging our feet today for once did some good. The snow has moved on and moved past. So we delayed ourselves long enough that we avoided the snow storm. Parking spot hopefully is done on... They got a pretty good dust and a snow here, eh? Look at this. Man, I'm glad I missed that. Maybe I should slack off more often. Miss all the snow storms. Now there it is. Okay. The sign is out. I'm just going to turn right into the driveway here because that's what smart people do. Quite a bit of snow before. I wouldn't be surprised if this parking lot was full. First we got to grab fuel, then we'll park. The other side. So I got to go here, turn right and then go around the back. Eight degrees Celsius. Still pretty warm. It's good. It's going to get colder through the night. I'm going to wake up. It'll be about minus 20. And tomorrow night it's supposed to get really cold. Maybe if we get lucky, we can get all of our work done tomorrow and we can get back down south tomorrow. Let's cross our fingers, cross our toes and anything else that you can figure out how to cross. Oh, there's lots of parking. That's fantastic. I'm going to sleep. So I've got to deliver about, well, pretty much right around the corner. Right over there. So I have some time yet. I'm going to relax a little bit and get a really good night's sleep. I'm a little bit tired today. I got up pretty early. I was up at 5 a.m. I had to be at my shop at 6 a.m. and leaving the shop no later than 6 30. Half an hour to get Old Blue ready to go. Get my stuff in there. Get myself ready to go. Get Old Blue out of the shop. Get my pickup in the shop. Close everything up, lock it up and head on down the road. And we made it. We got to the yard. We had to tie down half the load, which was already on the trailer at the yard. That took the longest because it's a whole pile of different beams and steel pieces and messy pallets and everything's banded to the pallet and you can't really... It was a little difficult to tie it down so it took a little bit of time. Then I went into Winnipeg, picked up the second half of the load and that took a little bit of time too because we had to figure out what we could fit on and what we couldn't. There was several drops up here. We couldn't fit them all on. So we got on as many as we could. Tied that down and then we stopped by Tim's and Old Bluff on the way up and the rest is history. It was a nice drive up today. It was a nice drive up north. Nice clear skies all day. I thought I'd be driving into a snowstorm because that's what the weatherman said. The weatherman was wrong. Weatherman's never wrong. Right? What a day. It was a good day. You know what? I didn't even tell myself this morning it was going to be a good day. Usually I have to wake up in the morning and say, today's going to be a good day. I don't care. I'm going to make it a good day. I didn't even do that today. It just turned out to be a good day all on its own. You see? If you do it long enough and you force yourself to have good days, just turn out good on their own. I think. Maybe I was just lucky. I don't know. Tomorrow I'll see you right here. Thanks for joining me today. We're going to go far north tomorrow farther north than I've ever been in Manitoba. All the way up to Gillam. I don't think the roads go much further than that. I think that's the end of the road. At this time of year, you can go further on the ice roads. But Old Blue doesn't go on the ice roads. She's an asphalt. An asphalt girl. And I'm an asphalt cowboy. I'm not an ice cowboy. I don't like the ice roads. They're very rough on your equipment. Maybe one day. Maybe one day. We'll see. But not today. We'll see you tomorrow.