My time in North Dakota was purely a work trip. I flew into Bismark, went to dinner, spent the night, taught a full day workshop the next day and flew home that evening. Dinner was on a River Boat, the state aging commissioner picked me up in a massive Buick station wagon. I remember the car more than the dinner or boat ride.
It was before digital cameras, and I was traveling lite and didn't take a camera with me, it was an overnight work trip. So, sadly I have no original photos from the trip (the photo above was taken last April in England.)
A few stand out memories. A Hops farm near the airport. I had never seen hops growing before. It is essentially a vine, and they grow it on massive trellis, probably 10-15 feet tall, and probably a 40 acre field of it near the entrance to the airport.
The hotel we stayed in was on a hilltop on the edge of town, out near the interstate. I was standing there looking out at the view, and a local walked up and started talking. He said, see that tree on the horizon? That is over a dozen miles away, and there is not another tree between here and there, hell there isn't a cow between here and there. The vastness of open prairie is something to see. There are hundreds of miles of gently rolling grasslands across the middle of the country that most people will never see. It is easy in DC, or NYC, to think that we are covering the country with pavement and houses, but we are not.
Would I go back there, yes. Maybe someday I will take a train across the country.
I’ve been to South Dakota many times, but never ventured north to North Dakota.
ReplyDeleteThat summer I was in both, about two weeks apart doing programs for AARP. We tried to schedule them, for Monday Tuesday, Thursday Friday of the same week, and couldn't, I flew out there twice in the same month.
DeleteIf I might be so bold David, that is an odd choice of photo-illustration for a blogpost about North Dakota! By the way, North Dakota was where a well-known blogger was born and raised - Bruce Taylor of "Oddball Observations" fame. I blogged about his home town here:-
ReplyDeletehttps://beefgravy.blogspot.com/search?q=Stanley
I thought standing there in a hat looking into the distance was a rather good illustration of looking off into the distance in the story line. Bruce is on my daily read list.
DeleteI'll tag along with you on an Amtrak across the North Dakota prairies.
ReplyDeleteThere is a line from Chicago to Seattle.
DeleteBack in the day when I lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba which is only an hour north of the Canada/USA border, I used to go "cross-border shopping" in North Dakota every year or so. North Dakota is essentially the same prairie geography as Manitoba and we share the Red River. Now here in Edmonton, I am seven hours north of the border and have not gone cross-border shopping for nearly 30 years. I believe Montana is directly south of Alberta.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother would go to Canada almost every summer to buy things she couldn't get in Michigan (English specialties.)
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