We awake to a message from Mike that we are Canada bound!  WoooHooo!  Be ready to leave at 8 am as we have about a three-hour drive ahead of us.  Neely and I are out by the van waiting patiently for the boys!  (slow pokes!).  Mike arrives and we load up our gear.  We wait patiently for Randy but he doesn’t show up so we decide to kill two birds with one stone and go gas up the van and grab some Mickey D’s for the road.  We head back and pick up Randy who jokingly posted on Facebook asking for a bus schedule!  lol.

Our initial plan is to head to Sydney and then check the models.  It is still possible that the higher risk could stay on this side of the border.  Mike wants to make sure that we play it right before committing to crossing the border.  He really wants to get us a tornado.  In his words it would be the “Ultimate Ending” for our tour.  Me, I just want to see a monster storm or a mother-ship.  To me that structure is just as impressive and it won’t cause any damage.

We stop in Plentywood about 25 minutes from Canada and we set up in a small rest area parking lot opposite a very bizarre site.  A pterodactyl flying in the wind!  There is a pterodactyl wind kite attached to a long flexible pole and as the wind blows the kite is flying and dancing in the wind.  It looks like it has been caught on a fishing pole and it just dances in the wind!  We have a really good laugh and point the dash cam in that direction.

At about 12:30 pm, Mike starts checking the various models and it starts to rain lightly.  The NAM shows the best storm is too far away from us as we have to be back in Denver by end of day tomorrow and wouldn’t make it if we go after this storm.  Randy thinks the storm to hit is west of us in Scoby but again doesn’t think we should head that way due to the road network, so Mike heads north.  We stop along a dirt road facing west to watch the storms develop.  The wheat field to our right is just swaying in the wind and I can’t help but hear the words to the song Oklahoma in my head.  “Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain, and the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet, when the wind comes right behind the rain”… Yes I know, we are just south of the Canadian border!  LOL

About 2:15 pm we do it – we cross into Canada!  We breeze through the check point with no problems whatsoever and we head towards Regina.  At 2:45 pm the cell appears to have overturning convection on the back side meaning it has busted the cap and is about to explode.  This is so exciting!  We have lost our stream and radar so we try tethering to Neely’s phone but it doesn’t work.  So Mike says “we shall chase old school style”!   Shannon Prentice starts texting Neely with some info.  Shannon and Neely are both Canadians so they have cell coverage up here.  Neely finally gets some radar up on her phone,  just enough to put a twinkle in Mike’s eye as he is loving how the storm is developing for us.

We watch as a scud cloud attached itself to the clouds creating a wall cloud.  A few minutes later we spot a very brief needle funnel cloud.  We follow the road grid pattern and stop several times to get out for pictures.  I am totally trilled that I have my Monster, and what a Monster it is.  Looks like a giant mouth about to gobble up the mustard fields below.  The contrast of the dark super cell storm against the bright yellow flowers of the mustard plants is mind-boggling.  Mike exclaims that these photos we are getting are just plain sick!  And he is right.  The contrasting colors and the occasional abandoned barns, houses and the many grain silos make for awesome photography.  We also run into several other storm chasers and there is a little convoy through the fields all supervised by a local police officer who stops to chat with us, noting Mikes’s Georgia license plate and making sure we know how the road conditions are and which ones to avoid.

After chasing this storm for a couple of hours, we head back to the border hoping to be able to catch one in North Dakota but we are too late for it.  However, as we are crossing the border, we are greeted with a spectacular double rainbow that seems to last forever.  We stop for some pictures and get the stream back up for the folks who are anxiously awaiting to see what is going on.  We pull over so Mike and Randy can map out a plan.  Mike wants to get as far south as we can tonight to make tomorrows journey as short as possible.  All in all we are about 14 hours away from Denver.  We actually end up back in Miles City where we were last night.

Neely hasn’t been feeling well at all today but she won’t let us do anything for her.  We’ve offered several times to stop, to get food, water or just rest and she won’t have it.  She doesn’t want to miss a thing and wants us to continue.  Mike is very worried about her as am I.  We have exchanged unspoken words several times today so I just keep an eye on her and let him know when we need to take a break.  And we just push on until we hit Miles City.  Randy in the mean time gets a post on FaceBook that a tornado touched down where we had been looking earlier in the day to hunt.  Mike is upset that we missed it.  He so wanted us to see a tornado but Neely and I tell him it’s ok.  We are more than happy with what we saw in Canada, and it gave him a taste of how to chase Canada in the future.  After awhile he settles down.   I truly believe that we made the right choice.  When I initially booked the trip last August, I wanted to see a tornado, but after seeing the Moore & Reno EF5’s live on stream and then knowing that it took the lives of 3 great storm chasers (Tim & Paul Samaras and Carl Young), I really didn’t want to see one at all.  What we did see was fantastic, and Mike got a chance to see how the customs check points worked and what the road conditions were like.  I’m sure he will back in Canada next summer for more fun.