#3: [12-Jan-04]

09-Sep-2001 -- 53N 106W was the fourth confluence we would attempt during a 24-hour visit to the Canadian prairies.

On Saturday, September 8, 2001, we had arrived in Saskatoon at 10:10 a.m. and successfully visited 53N 108W, 53N 111W and 52N 111W. We had returned to Saskatoon at 9:45 p.m., found a hotel room, had a late dinner and gotten to bed by 11:30 p.m. By 6:30 a.m. Sunday morning, we had checked out of our hotel, grabbed coffee and muffins at the nearest Tim Horton’s and were on our way northeast on Highway 11 in search of 53N 106W.

Locating the confluence turned out to be very simple. Aided once again by maps from MapQuest, we simply had to drive along Highway 11 in the direction of Prince Albert until we reached the 53rd parallel (just south of the town of MacDowall) and then take the next road on the right. We drove a couple of hundred metres on this dirt road before venturing west on foot through yet another recently harvested field to locate our final destination.

We literally ran the 250 metres or so from the car to the confluence not only because we had to get back to Saskatoon for our return flight to Boston, but also because our GPS was informing us that we were almost completely out of battery power. Very quickly, we snapped our GPS photo and then took our other confluence pictures.

The area of this confluence was much like the three we had visited the day before. We found it on the very edge of a recently harvested hayfield where the field meets a small patch of birch trees.

Once our photos were taken, we quickly returned to our car and raced back to Saskatoon. We actually had enough time to stop along the way for 15 minutes at the Batoche National Historic Site. This is the site of the last battle in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885.

We arrived back at the Saskatoon airport at 10:08 a.m., almost exactly 24 hours after we had first landed there. In total, we had traveled 1172 kilometres and successfully reached 4 confluences. The weekend was a lot of fun, but I don’t think we’ll be doing anything quite as hectic for a while.