#3: [25-May-24]

#1: [26-Apr-02]

21-Aug-2004 -- We took a road trip from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada to visit our daughters - one in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. and one in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This is one of fourteen successful confluence visits along the way.

It seemed that this should be an easy confluence to reach - on the flat prairies, just south of a major highway, a nice day and so on. However, as the first visitor found out, the area has many sloughs (pronounced "slews") or prairie ponds. Some of the sloughs had dried up over the summer while others were full of water with ducks swimming on them. We drove around the area looking for the closest access road. The best was on tracks across the soil at the edge of a field off Highway 2 opposite Petersburg. This took us to 320 meters from the confluence.

Just as we were preparing to walk it started raining heavily. We jumped back into the van and headed off that soil for fear it would turn to mud and leave us stuck there. The rain let up a little so we decided to go for it wearing our rain gear. We were luckier than the first visitor because of the time of year. Some of the sloughs on the route had dried up so we were able to walk almost directly to the spot without making detours around them. The distance from the van to the spot was 670 m.

When we walked through one open muddy area through bulrushes we could see deer hoof prints in the mud. One open area, formerly a slough, was now dry and full of weeds. Next we made our way through taller weeds, over a fence, then through more tall thick wet weeds. We found the confluence amongst bulrushes in a muddy dried up slough. In every direction there are bulrushes. There are some photos showing views from the edge of the bulrushes. Petersburg is visible in the north view.

It continued raining. You can see the raindrops on the GPS. By the time we got back to the van we were fairly wet and our footwear had become thick with mud. We cleaned off the mud, dried off the cameras and GPS, and shook raindrops off our rain wear. Of course, as we climbed back into the van to leave, it stopped raining.

East along Highway 2 is an experimental seed plot set up by Interstate Seed Company of West Fargo, North Dakota. One of the plots, 980 meters NW of the confluence, was full of a variety of sunflowers in full bloom. Across the highway to the north is Petersburg, established in 1882 when the first settlers came to the area. Further east along the highway a group of combines and several big grain trucks were harvesting a field of ripe wheat. Soybeans and corn were other popular crops.