Road Trip Recap: Day 1

The first day was our most productive day and went according to Mary's plan...well, pretty much. It was long...12+ hours of driving including stops. We left at 7:00 am wearing our RTC (Road Trip Chicks) t-shirts and rolled into Brandon, MB around 10:00 pm. Fueled mostly by Starbucks coffee. We were so hoping to visit the Ruby's Cafe set in Saskatchewan (from the TV show 'Corner Gas') and score our first souvenir t-shirt. But we couldn't see it from the road and decided to keep on truckin' instead of taking any major detours. We were pretty sad about that. The roads were great and the weather was great until Brandon where it was cold and snowing, but still not that bad. We wasted no time in cracking jokes and laughing and losing our minds in the car together. This is why I love road trips. LOVE them. Our t-shirts caught a lot of attention and were a conversation piece from the get go, and that was really fun. We stopped in Swift Current (now affectionately referred to as "Swiss" Current thanks to a Freudian slip) for lunch at a nice little diner on Main Street called 'Modern Family Restaurant'. Had a surprisingly tasty and huge spinach salad there. After that, or before that...somewhere along the way, Mary realized that the gas tank was on empty and that we hadn't seen a gas station for a while. We continued to drive on empty with Mary panicking and me laughing. We were so relieved to finally see a pitiful little gas station up ahead and immediately pulled over. Only, when we began to look closer, the gas pump had no handle and the store was a little sketchy. I volunteered to go knock on the door but gave up when I saw this sign:

I had to take a picture and show Mary when I got back to the car. She did not find this funny. After minutes of debating how far we could go with the gas gauge needle now below empty, and whether we should hit up the next farmer or keep going...we decided to drive on. We found a little town called Metlarch and some locals in a realty office (portable trailer) who directed us up the road to a gas station on the highway. One of the ladies was incredibly kind and even offered to give us her cell phone number if we got stuck. The other lady looked unsure of us and I can't get her teeth out of my mind. We managed to make it to the functioning gas station on what gas was left and filled up. Mary was relieved and I was still laughing. We were both happy to get to Brandon and settle in for the night in a warm bed at the hotel. All in all, we stuck to our schedule, managed to reach our planned destination for the day, and had a lot of fun.