North Dakota (still)

If you had said to me, you will want to stay an extra night in North Dakota, I would have thought you were nuts. It does not abound with museums or art or interesting shops. There is the Walmart, people fishing, expanses of nothingness. When I first saw its lake country, I decided ND was the love spawn of Indiana and Florida. It was covered in stubble fields and perpendicular dirt country roads, and any depression in the ground filled with water

I slept one night at Devil's Lake, and had a lovely time. Leaving there, I became lost, disoriented by all the dirt country roads, made terrible time and gas mileage. I slept in a Walmart parking lot in Bismarck, an unremarkable city without a single Internet cafe. I had my sights on Montana for my Monday night, with a scheduled stop in the bizarrely named "Badlands."

They seem to be a combination of virginal praire and sandstone, wind-carved bluffs. I had planned to stop and hike, but seeing the painted canyons, decided to stay a night. A huge thundercloud was also rolling over my head, and I prefer to be in my trailer with my cats in a storm, than wrestling the wet highway and speeding traffic. The storm did not hit, but rather transformed into cute fluffy clouds after I set camp and had a nap. I have spent the afternoon hiking lovely little trails along a 36 mile scenic drive through the park. I have seen snakes, prairie dog towns, wild ponies, and buffalo. I would like to speak of each of these in great length, even planned everything I would say, as I was seeing them, but there isn't time, nor cell signal.

Suffice to say, I had a lovely time hiking. I washed my car. I saw many mythical American beasts, and I fully expect them to be peeking in my window at dawn.

P.S. I met a couple returning from Yellowstone National Park, one of my next stops. They said there us still snow on the ground there. I didn't pack for snow. Shall I risk it anyway?

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