North and South Dakota

11/2/05

I began driving excitedly ready to explore new terrain. I drove the long, desolate remainder of road in Montana. We went a little out of the way to go to North Dakota. We've never been and don't see an opportunity of getting out that way in the future.

We took a picture of me in front of the North Dakota sign. Everything that I had heard about the state proved to be true. There's not much there. We saw what appeared to be a ghost town. We stopped in a little town called Bowman. When I asked where to eat, they said that the fast food place was closed for the winter. I noticed alot of places were closed for the season in the Dakotas. The temperature gets down to 40 degrees below. That's probably the reason.

We ended up eating at a hole in the wall. I asked if they had any vegetables. The response was "no." I don't think green vegies are readily available up in the Dakotas. We had the special. It was a slice of turkey between two pieces of white bread with mashed potatoes. The entire plate (even the sandwich) was covererd with gravy. It was wierd.

Brock couldn't pass thru Sturgis, home of the huge bike week event, without stopping. I bought him a sock hat at the Harley shop.

As we were driving thru South Dakota, a dark colored eagle flew right in front of our truck. I was afraid we would hit the bird; it was so close. I wanted to take a picture of it, but I was just frozen watching it soar outside our window.

The Dakotas are crazy windy. At one point, I couldn't shut the passenger door of the truck because of the wind!