Westward Bound

We’re heading west, on our way home. It’s been a sometimes wonderful and sometimes odd trip. We’re still more than 1,000 miles from home, but we’re heading in that direction geographically and emotionally.

We had very hard rain in Duluth, but fortunately we were already in our motel room when it hit. The next day we headed across northern Minnesota. Well, sort of northern – not the Boundary Waters, but west from Duluth to Bemidji and farther west. The road was through the woods and around lakes both big and small. About an hour west of Bemidji we were – suddenly it seemed – on the Great Plains. Rather than predominating, the trees were in small sections of woods scattered between the large, open, flat fields. Then we crossed the Red River into North Dakota. 

We stayed the night in Grand Forks. The hotel had quite a number of tall college-age women there for a series of volleyball games. Grand Forks is home to the University of North Dakota. The teams in the hotel were from Green Bay, Missoula, and New Mexico – quite an extensive conference.

From Grand Forks we headed south. The air was dense with smog – wildfire smoke mixed with morning fog. About an hour into the drive the tire warning light came on. We stopped at a tire shop in a tiny town along the highway. The shop was open, and the radio was playing in the garage part. Andrea “hoo-hoo-ed” a couple of times with no results. Rather than wait for someone to return, we continued south to Fargo, where we got the tires pumped up and continued on our way.

At Watertown we got off the interstate and drove the two-lanes through the countryside to cut the corner of South Dakota and join I-90 west of Sioux Falls. I got lost in the road construction only once, so we made good time. We spent the night in Mitchell, SD. We’d seen the Corn Palace a couple of times before, so we skipped it this time.

Along the side of the highway, in both Dakotas, the grass looked freshly mowed, with large round bales here and there, presumably made up from the clippings. I always wonder if the highway department does it or if it has arrangements with local farmers: cut the grass and keep the clippings.

West across South Dakota, the land is very flat, with huge fields of grass, sunflowers, sorghum, and of course corn. And now and then in the distance we would see a small town with grain elevators thrust up into the sky like church steeples.

The Missouri River cuts through the state, pretty much in the middle. East of the river the land is very flat. Immediately after crossing the river, the land changes to having more roll to it, getting increasingly up-and-down as we continued west. 

We stopped at Murdo, population 676, to charge the car. We’d stopped there overnight a number of times. One of those times we toured the car museum. That’s worth the stop if you happen this way. It has lots more than just cars. It is evidently one man’s collection of cars and motorcycles and whatnot, housed in a scattering of dusty sheds. The collection is remarkable for its variety, but the museum is also one-of-a-kind – nothing fancy, just a South Dakota farm country collection.

And we stopped in Wall for the obligatory visit to Wall Drug, crowded with people from all over. Then it was on to the Black Hills. This is beautiful country, but it seems to have collected more and more schlock each time I come through.

Tonight we are in Custer, South Dakota, in the southern portion of the Black Hills. We charged the car here – our 500th different charging station! 

(I had thought the 500th would be in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. C’est la vie!)