From my steak lunch and rest at Luverne I once again headed north. I was now about 200 miles from the Canadian border and bound for my next fuel stop, Ortonville, 116 miles away, and as usual I had no idea what to expect. All I knew is that according to my chart there was an airfield there.

When I landed nearly two hours later and switched off there was deathly silence. The place was run down, deserted and unmanned. There was however a credit card operated aviation fuel pump, a Coke machine and toilets, plus up to date flying information manuals. This airfield was fully equipped but in need of a lot of maintenance; obviously the local townspeople were not interested in flying.

Fully tanked up with coke and gas I climbed out for the next overnight stop at “Wahpeton” just inside the North Dakota border. I was now flying in the state of “Minnesota” my last state North, but had decided to track up the west side along the North and South Dakota borders and away from the worst of the very desolate forest area south of Lake of The Woods, my destination. This was about 10,000 square miles of nothing but dense pine forest with almost no human habitation. The area was populated mostly by deer, wolves, bears and mosquitoes. If I had an engine failure and landed in that lot I might never be found. Later, leaving Minnesota, I was to fly over a similar area further east that made me nervous.

At Wahpeton the FBO's [Fixed Base Operator or Airfield Manager] office was closed for the night so I decided to pitch my tent on the grass around the back of the office and alongside the wing. There was a weather front looming ahead and was due to arrive later that night so I had plenty of time. Since the incident at Cleveland, when using the tent, I had got into the habit of pitching it over the wing flying wires so in the event of unexpected bad weather the wing leaving the ground would take me with it and so wake me up.

Across the airfield I noticed some activity and a crop dusting aircraft leaving to the north. I wandered across and was greeted by Tri State Air Ag manager Kyle. After explaining that I was about to camp behind the office next to my Blade and was that ok? he looked at the oncoming front and without pausing said, “No! Put your aircraft in our hangar and sleep on the couch.” These Americans are unbelievable, hospitality and thought for others seems to come as second nature.

Alan, the cropduster pilot, soon arrived back from a spray job and they explained all about their work. Kyle, the manager, is a pilot and agronomist, which basically means he is skilled in the science of knowing which chemical to spray on which crop. These chemicals fall into three basic categories: insect killer, antifungal and a powerful weedkiller called "Roundup” [this will kill any plant]. Here lies the skill of spraying. Spray Roundup on the wrong field in wind or the wrong conditions and the farmer next door will get red in the face as he watches his prized crop of sweetcorn slowly die. Double spray an area and it will cost flying time and valuable chemical. The spray pilots are very skilled and can pick out the right field 99% of the time, some feat when you consider the vast areas involved. A clever GPS system then guides them in, with each successive sweep a further 60 ft to the left or right. Weather conditions have to be just right and, very importantly, so do the humidity and wind. It is a very stressful job, usually flying literally dawn to dus,k and the accident rate is high, typically involving flying into power lines and towers. The planes are specially made and are built like tanks.

Next morning the weather was too windy for me to take to the air so I settled down to a day on the ground. Next door I met Gerry, the FBO and a very talented engineer, who made his living refurbishing old wartime aircraft. His latest being a beautiful “Corsair”, a very effective American fighter from WW2. The hours dedication and skill that goes into rebuilding these relics is incredible. As I watched he warmed up and left to display at some distant air show.

Just after lunch a young lady from the local paper arrived, asked a few questions and left; she was followed by a very professional reporter and photographer who stayed much longer took a lot more photos and said he had been unhappy with his trainee.

That night Alan and I shared a pizza and a few beers while the weather turned bad again. Alan lives in an apartment within the hanger with his cat and his dog Sasha. During his working day after every two or three missions he takes them both out to stretch and “toilet”, often accompanied by the airport cat Tubby who appears each morning about 6 am and wails loudly until she is admitted into the office.

Up at 4.30am and fully fuelled and loaded by 6 am, my next destination was Thief River Falls, a fairly major airport accepting large passenger aircraft from Canada. On my planned route I was due to overfly Hawley, a much smaller field East of Fargo City and just inside Fargo Airport control zone. Alan had made me a packed lunch and waved me off as I climbed out into the sunrise into a 15 mph head wind and at 1000 feet began to cross the still sleeping city of Wahpeton.

Ahead I had a journey of 125 miles to Thief River, about 3 hours flying time with this head wind, so I settled down at 3500 feet and to pass the time I planned the refit of my bathroom and toilet back home and hoped I hadn't drunk too much coffee before leaving. I haven't tried it but it would be very difficult to pee over the side of a Microlight in flight, especially with the propeller behind me.

More than an hour later I realised that I had drunk too much! Time to get down and kill some weeds behind a lucky owners hanger. On my GPS Skymap I noticed that Hawley, just east of Fargo, was about 15 miles to my left just out of sight in the morning haze so I swung west, found it, and circled overhead. Just as I had decided the trees over to left would be a good place to relieve the burning in my bladder I spotted a few cars and some movement near the hangers. Great! I could top up my tanks as well.

I was met by three early morning fliers from the local club who allowed me the use of the toilet [better known in America as the Restroom or Bathroom or any name not as crude as toilet] and then in the absence of the official fuel seller, they topped up my tanks with their own fuel and refused payment! After writing out the website address for them I waved goodbye to three real gents and climbed back up to 3500 feet feeling much better and again wishing my old “friend” Dick Caldwell from Sulpher Springs had been there.

I now had about 1 ½ hours to Thief River Falls, and from there I was heading to a landing place at the Canadian border. This was in Jack Laffin's garden at Williams, Minnesota. Jack was a power chute pilot in his early 70's and had been emailing my father and I for more than a year. He was my halfway point. The machine he flies is similar to my own except that it uses a giant parachute instead of a wing to get airborne.

The town of Williams was 20 miles to the east of Warroad, just across from Canada. After an uneventful flight to Thief River Falls I landed at this relatively huge International airport to find it almost deserted, no refreshments, no fuel, no nothing and it was 9.30am! I finally made contact with the gardener, a very happy and friendly gent who obtained fuel for me that was usually reserved for the lawnmowers. Thanking him profusely I topped up and flew on.

I had a further 73 miles and with this headwind about 1 ½ hrs of flying to Warroad. Now at about 10am the sun was high and very hot and of course with the heat came the thermals and turbulence. I had decided to continue in case the weather changed again and I got stuck at Thief River Falls airport for the night. As soon as I was airborne the fun began, dipping, diving, pitching left and right; it began to get crazy so I climbed and climbed to avoid it, but the ground was heating fast and as soon as I had leveled out to calmer air the thermals reached my level so on I climbed. I reached 5500 feet, which was 2000 feet above the cloud layer and stable but very cold. Now with 40 miles to go I could see Lake Of The Woods and Canada way ahead in the slight haze. Again the turbulence caught up with me and I climbed yet again to 6000 ft. It was a beautiful clear morning with scattered cloud below sailing by like ships; all around me was some of the most desolate country in the USA . Ahead I could see the cloud layer rising like a hill, sloping up above my present altitude of 6250ft, so I continued to climb gently and of course got colder and colder.

My fingers were now numb, in particular my right hand - and of course I had put my thin gloves on, the others were deep in the rucksac behind me and inaccessible. I still preferred this though to the rollercoaster waiting below . Alternately sitting on my hands I was able to maintain some feeling in them until eventually, at just over 7000feet and 15 miles to go, I decided to begin a long glide down to the airport and warmer air. The cloud had now partly cleared and from this height the view was spectacular. Across the Lake I could see Manitoba to the left and Ontario to the right separated from the United States by the Rainy River. Roseau lay 20 miles to my left and Warroad dead ahead lay alongside the lake, while Baudette sat on the river to the far right. I could not fly any further north now without submitting an International Flight Plan.

Reducing my engine revs to 3000rpm my nose dipped and I began a shallow glide into Warroad. At 6500 feet I hit the thermals and as usual it was very rough. I pulled the control bar in to increase airspeed and cut through it. I was in more of a dive than a glide and was soon in the overhead above the runway and radioing my intention to land, my hands and feet thawing out rapidly. As usual the folks here were very friendly and put my machine in the hanger for the night. The plan was to return the following day early and land at Jack's house at Williams, about 15 miles to the East.

Jack and Katie, his wife, had built their home miles outside town. It was a lovely place, peaceful and isolated with two aircraft runways built into the garden. With Jack,s cameras clicking I circled overhead and made a few low passes before landing too high over the powerlines and running into the shallow waterlogged ditch at the end, stopping two inches from the wheat crop. Jack pulled me out of the mud with his little four wheel ATV. Now retired, he had spent his working life fur trapping, logging and gambling, often paying his bills with a winning poker hand when times were lean. Throughout his working life he had spent many lonely days and nights out in the backwoods cutting trees and hauling them to the pulp mills to haggle over a decent price. In the bitter winters this region enjoys this was a very hard and often dangerous life - then with the spring came the huge bloodsucking mosquitoes and deer ticks carry on where the snow and ice leaves off.

Running through the area is 40 miles of very busy railway track owned and maintained by the Canadian National Railway. The track, for various geographical reasons, runs into the US from Canada then back into Canada to continue its journey East carrying mostly timber products. One morning over breakfast at the local café I met the small group of track workers who are American but are paid by the Canadians. They were passing dice around the breakfast table and gambling on who would pay for the coffee that morning. They work in two teams using specially built trucks which can be driven onto the track and a set of train type wheels lowered down, lifting the truck which can now be operated like a miniature train engine. Most of the lines they maintain are not accessible by road.

A few days later my friend Graham Sharples arrived, a fellow Mainair Blade flyer from the UK. He had come to the USA on business and had decided to take a few days break in the area and see what the flying was like. We had competed in the Round Britain Rally a few times as pilot and navigator, completing the first and dropping out of the second up in Scotland having lost too many points to make it worth continuing. Jack took us out into the forest and showed us his workplace, often coming upon abandoned logging camps and old and forgotten cemeteries. Logging was a lonely and hard life and the financial rewards were not great. Jack had to have many skills and would design and build machinery to cut the trees off at the ground, strip the branches and saw them into lengths before carting them off to the mills. The logged areas were mostly plantations and after cutting trees were replanted to be harvested many years later.

Jacks wife Katie was a great cook and I began to worry that if I didn't fly on east my growing weight would stop me getting off the ground. After our good-byes to Jack and Katie, Graham set off by road and I flew east to International Falls another major border town sitting on the Rainy River. From here I would change course to south east and head for Oshkosh in Wisconsin, the world's biggest general aviation airshow and fly in

. We booked into a local Motel then set off for a cup of coffee in Canada just over the border to Fort Frances. To do this it was necessary to pass through customs and immigration both ways and on the Canadian side paying a toll fee both ways to a Paper Mill owner on whose land the border crossing sat. The Canadian immigration officer was very pleasant and gave us lapel badges. The coffee was awful.

Next morning we parted me heading to Wisconsin and Graham to Los Angeles.