-----Though Minot is remote, our day's journey was to take us even further afield. Our first stop of the day, after a brief currency exchange, was to the Scandinavian Heritage Park. The Minot area was settled by many Scandinavians, and the park contains statues and buildings erected to honor them. In front of the welcome center—shaped like a large log cabin—was a marble design sprawled across the landscape, showing the five Scandinavian countries and their capitals. Statues of Hans Christian Andersen, Leif Erikson, and several famous skiing champions led the way to a massive replica Norwegian church which looked more or less like a pagoda when glimpsed from afar. Behind this church was a wooden horse, painted a bright red and standing thirty feet tall. This was a Dala horse, a recognizable Swedish symbol.

-----A park such as that is not something that one would expect in many places, but much less so when in the middle of nowhere like Minot. The only unfortunate thing about it was that it proved to be the only get-out-and-walk-around part of our day's journey, something that ideally would be evenly spread throughout.

-----We topped off the tank in Minot and then left the city northbound on US-52, which took us over hills and prairies all the way up to Portal, North Dakota, a town situated around the border crossing. (We were later to learn that many of the border patrol agents do not live in Portal, but rather commute up from Minot or points further south.) Our journey across the border—marking our fourth time in Canada—was a bit more complicated given the road work at the crossing and the need to stop by U.S. Customs first so as to get a shotgun approved. Since we are traveling to extremely remote areas in Alaska, we had decided to procure one should we break down and subsequently are accosted by a bear. The agent came by the car and soon thereafter we were approved.

-----The second step was to actually go through Canadian customs, which would have taken about five minutes had not the shotgun thrown a wrinkle into things. Declaring it involved parking and going inside the border office, where a fellow asked us basic questions and had my dad fill out a form. One $25 (Canadian) fee later, and all that was left was for a Canadian agent to actually see the shotgun.

-----The quiet man who was assisting us got a phone call, and so a lady came by and took over the process. She said that she needed to see the shotgun while we watched from the building, but we explained that it was hidden very well and the only way she'd find it would be a brute-force method of expunging the car of its Tetris-esque packed contents. She asked, somewhat warily, of how much we actually had in the car. Once we said "we're driving from North Carolina to Alaska and back," she understood the trepidation that an entire re-packing would involve, and promptly had us go to something called the Exam Bay.

-----The Exam Bay sounds a lot more official than it is. It was like a large car wash, with two industrial-strength garage doors at either end and tables for travelers to wait at. The tables are replete with taped-on papers in a plethora of languages exhorting those at said tables to stay calm and to cooperate with authorities. Throughout the process, we got her to loosen up from the super-serious attitude that plagues many border patrol officers. We described, in brief detail, our misadventures and exploits from past trips and assured her of our preparation, most notably when my dad mentioned our upcoming oil-changing appointments in points still farther afield.

-----Though nothing was fully unpacked, it still took us a while to get everything situated again, but when we did, we rolled north into Canada. The hour we'd gained by entering a province exempt from the misnamed and irritating tyranny of Daylight Savings had been negated by the hour spent at the border, making for a very Newtonian equal and opposite reaction.

-----The road north led to Regina, and the barrenness was nothing less than profound. The last of the North Dakotan hills fell away and led to utter flatness for miles and miles in any direction you'd care to look, although the terrain still exhibited that curious, constantly uphill tilt. The entire province, I'm convinced, is slanted; our journeys westward and northward have exhibited the same phenomenon. Either the terrain defies the laws of physics and goes uphill in every direction, or everything in the province rolls inexorably to the southeast.

-----The clouds overhead began to intermittently drizzle, and the toughest part of the drive—aside from the psychological adjustment to kilometers—was in adjusting the windshield wipers to accommodate the ever-changing precipitation. Towns whose populations had to have been in the low double digits and whose main claims to fame were their slowly decaying grain elevators dotted the northwesterly route at extremely regular intervals, occasionally necessitating a slowing. Aside from these, we stayed at 100 KM/H, which equates to a little over 60 MPH.

-----We had planned to fill our half-empty gas tank and our entirely empty stomachs in Regina, a full two and a half hours south of our ultimate destination in Saskatoon. Yet as we scanned around for a suitable location, before we knew it, we were out of the city heading north. I'd been driving since Minot and was eager to switch off at the first opportunity, and such an opportunity presented itself in the form of a small town at the bottom of a large hill: Lumsden. We peeled off at a gas station, where we learned that the penny was rounded down, and we got a full two-dollar coin—known as a "toonie"—in change.

-----The road from Regina to Saskatoon was a full four lanes most of the way, although traffic was still as barren as ever despite being on the main artery between the two largest cities in the province. The sky became of such a vast expanse that one could see entire storm systems rumbling in the distance, lending weight to Saskatchewan's tourist motto as the "Land of Living Skies." We attempted to reconstruct, from memory, as much as we could about the routes of our first four trips, which was an activity that took us all the way to Saskatoon, the largest city in the province.

-----My mom, when not driving, fulfills the crucial role of primary route navigator, juggling maps, printouts, and her phone, and she does an admirable job of it save for the times when what she reads has no bearing on what can be seen from the driver's perspective. We'd nibbled on snacks in the car throughout the day and neglected a formal lunch entirely, and though hunger gnawed at us, the closer we came to a hearty Saskatonian dinner, the more we decided to press on. This is when her navigational ability struck a mighty discord: she attempted to get us to a Canadian Brewhouse—a regional chain seen only in large cities across the Canadian prairies—only to put us on a road that did not have anything but houses after the promised half-kilometer. We turned around and went back to the main intersection, doubled back around, pulled several U-turns, and even went down the road the other direction in an attempt to find it by street address, but all to no avail. Frustration ran high.

-----Though distraught at Google taking us astray, we still had directions to our hotel, and though we had no confidence in their accuracy, we nonetheless still attempted to get there by going much further down along the very same street. Just as we crossed over the highway and all hope seemed lost ... there lay the Canadian Brewhouse. We decided to eat and orient ourselves towards our hotel as best we could.

-----The Canadian Brewhouse, simply put, is a cross between the dark, sports TV-dominated lighting of a Buffalo Wild Wings and the general waitressing aesthetic of a Hooter's. Neither of those chains seem to have a foothold in the Great North, and if they ever did, they'd find themselves sorely beaten to the punch. Their food is also quite good, although its flavor may have been augmented by how famished our stomachs were.

-----My dad got a stir-fry with a thick and savory sauce, with chunky vegetables and an ideal rice ratio. He also reported tender beef chunks. My mom and I, in remembrance of the third Great American Road Trip, felt as if we had to go for a donair, which came wrapped in a pita much like a gyro. The only difference between their donair and a gyro was a special, slightly spicy donair sauce (as opposed to the tart tzatziki found on gyros) and the melted cheese that helped bind the meat and vegetables—few and far between as they were—together. It's one of those things that is only in Canada now, but we can only wonder when it'll make its way to the States. They always seem to be on the cutting edge of things above the 49th parallel.

-----I wolfed down my donair in short order, even taking out the cucumbers in my side salad and downing two lemonades in quick succession. We were re-introduced to the uniquely Canuck practice of bringing a small credit card machine to the table, and while that process was ongoing, we asked our waitress about the possible location of our hotel, which we felt just had to be nearby after all we'd been through. She knew immediately that we'd used Google; apparently, the location of their shopping center tricks the algorithms into thinking it's somewhere else.

-----While we braced for the possibility that our hotel would also go through a magical and mysterious technological vanishing act, no such thing occurred; we found where we were spending the night within five minutes.

-----Tomorrow: Whitecourt, Alberta, the furthest north I will have ever theretofore been.