I leave the house for 2 hours to watch one of my friends do a music performance and I get back to our street and there is Chaos!!! - 6 fire trucks on the street.. There were tons of people standing around and I'm wondering what's going on. Someone said there was a fire in one of the houses. I thought that was pretty exciting and probed for more info. I like when crazy stuff happens. I asked someone on the street "what side of the street was the fire on?" They said "right&. gulp. Parked the car. ran in to the crescent. gong show. it was so our house!!!! After all the commotion I got into the house to look around. I overheard someone say "this place looks like hell". I'd have to agree with him. I guess the firemen had to cut a hole in the roof cause it got into the attic. There was a lot of damage but I think half was due to burning and half smoke damage. Everything downstairs is fine.

Christie told me the good story after. I guess it was started by a candle. I really feel sorry that I had to miss all the action.

I heard the figure of $90,000 damage thrown around (not including possessions). That is pretty crazy since the fire only burned for a couple minutes. Luckily we had good insurance - they are throwing money at us and when it's all said and done they are going to do some much needed renovations for us!

Confluence hunting wasn't the primary objective on this beautiful spring day. Today Amie and I (steve) were devoted to exploring abandoned farms and towns. Amie got some crazy leads about some abandoned real estate around this CP and I wasn't going to tell until later that I also had confluence on my mind. Be assured, pillaging and vandalizing abandoned farms is definitely high on my list as well. There are definitely more popping up every day in rural Saskatchewan. Did I say pillaging? I mean photographing, ya...

Anyway, the best ghostfarm that we found was west of Outlook. It looked like it had been abandoned for 10-20 years at least. On the farm there was a little two story house and a bunch of sheds and barns. Everything was deteriorated and someone had already scampered off with most of the booty. There was still one very significant item that was preserved to our delight. On the deck of the house there laid a freeze-dried cat!! It had been there for some time and was complete with skin and tail. See the picture on the left.... Oh right, this is supposed to be about confluence. Sorry for the tangent but confluencing and ghostfarming need to be linked together in Saskatchewan. After realizing that 90% of the accessible points lie in the middle of flat fields there needs something a little spicy to complement every CP adventure.

As you can see in the photo, this confluence does in fact lie in the middle of a farmer's field (surprise). No one really cared today that we were tromping through the fields, so there wasn't too much excitement (a little exercise though!). After some pictures and stubble gymnastics, the point was conquered. Much to our dismay, the point had previously been visited by our Sask. arch rivals (Fox's/Max/MacDuff). Maybe this summer I'll be able to venture an uncharted point and actually further the confluence project. Until then, stay tuned for more adventures and scattered drivel!

Difficulty: 1 (open field, easy access) Enjoyment: 8 (nice day, good company, near ghostfarms).

This is another really easy CP to visit. It is located in a Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb. There is really not much to comment about since you can drive right to the point. The only difficult part was trying to take pictures in the unbearable cold and wind. Just to beef up the story a bit, after visiting the point we went walking around one of the many Minneapolis lakes. We were hoping for some sort of adventure but nothing looked that interesting. That's about the time when Jadon fell through the ice up to his chest in water. It was pretty funny because Koop had to give up his pants to save Jadon from freezing.

Difficulty: 1 (accessible by car)

Enjoyment: 2

A few of us happened to be in Chicago for the day after a conference in Urbana, Illinois. We noticed while driving into the city, that a confluence point lied somewhere in a Chicago suburb. The point most likely had previous visitors but we decided to go there anyway. The point was easily found on some residential street in front of a house. We started taking pictures of the point just as the owners of the house came out to leave. They were obviously a bit disturbed at our presence because they wouldn't leave while we were still there. They just sat in their car and gave us weird looks. We decided to pretend to walk back to our car. It worked! As soon as we started walking away, they left. They turned a corner and we ran back and finished taking pictures.

Difficulty: 1 (you can drive there)

Enjoyment: 2 (weird neighbors, far away from home, most people we have been to a CP with)