Day 18: 114 Km Just Another Day

Today is like any other day in the prairies, the sky is blue, the sun is hot, the roads are straight, and the fields stretch on for miles. Our blog entries may get a bit shorter as things just really don’t change too much. I am also taking far less photos as they all seem to look so similar.

There are a few things of interest that I would like to mention. Number one, this is clearly oil country; number two, people eat a lot of beef; and number three, I really hate mosquitoes.

To start with number one; the fields are dotted with oil drills, or "grasshoppers", here. I’ve noticed that most of them have run dry and are now just bits of infrastructure in the soil. The number of oil and gas transportation trucks going by has increased. In BC you see forest products zipping by; here you see fossil fuel products zipping by on their way to feed their offspring, the F-150. Another interesting thing I have noticed is that a lot of these fields are sponsored, or owned, by oil and gas companies such as EnCana. I’m not totally sure what stipulations this may have for agricultural uses on these fields. If anyone knows more about this, please enlighten me.

Moving on to number two; there are a lot of cows here. At one point in the day we had an oil drilling parts supplier on our left and a slaughterhouse on our right; an environmentalist’s nightmare. Here’s a little tidbit on why being vegetarian is one of the greatest ways to reduce your carbon footprint: Agriculture (and this is mostly meat production) accounts for 18% of global emissions. Now, that number may not mean anything to you on its own, but looked at comparatively with global road transportation emissions it really does mean something. All of the cars and trucks in the whole world account for 17% of global emissions--less than agriculture! Read more and go veg.

Oh ya, and another kind of truck that has been zipping by us are livestock transport trucks; the size of semi’s, with poop splattered out the holes in the sides, and a reaking stench that trails on for about 500m. We really dread the site of these barrelling up in our rearview mirrors which is happening all to often.

And lastly number three; the mosquitoes are vicious here. We arrived at our campsite in Brooks to be immediately swarmed. Jumping around we managed to get into our longs before we got completely massacred. They still managed to bite through our clothing, soaking ourselves in repellent was a necessary misfortune. The rest of the evening consisted of dashing to the shower, dashing back to camp, and diving into our tents; the only safe havens around. We had previously contemplated spending an extra day in Brooks as we are again ahead of schedule, that option has been axed—we are getting out of here ASAP!