Blogging on the Fly

As I'm writing this, we've been out of touch for a couple of days. We're stopped for lunch overlooking beautiful Lake Sakakawea in New Town, North Dakota...the Great Plains. I'll have to tell you more about the lake and the overlook later. For now, I'm on limited battery time, and I want to cut and paste something I wrote days earlier after we left our Harvest Host in Miles City, Montana.

Cutting and pasting now:

As I’m writing this post, I’m seated at our table inside Theodore Roosevelt National Park. There is no electricity, save what we can generate with our generator, and there is no wi-fi or cell signal. This is a minor inconvenience (yes, I’m listening Florida), except that the words pile up in my head. So today I’m trying something a little different to see how it works. I’m going to write my posts in a word document, and then copy and paste them into Blogger when I’m able to get online again. The only downside of this arrangement is that I won’t be able to upload any pictures to my word document. That part will have to wait until I can get online again. And this too is a minor inconvenience in that I use my pictures as I write to remind me of what I wanted to say. Oh well. It’s an imperfect world, in a pretty darned good life. This narrative is offered only as an explanation…not a complaint, by any means. We’re counting our blessings these days.

So, to get on with it, we left Miles City, Montana, and drove into North Dakota and the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park on Saturday. We’ve visited the South Unit before, and you can read my blog post from that visit in 2014 right here. Our tour book suggests that the North Unit is the more beautiful of the two, and we noticed that right away as we drove in. But I want to back up to our last morning at the Harvest Host site where we stayed. Harvest Host asks that we not mention the name of our host, and so I won’t; however, I can show you some pictures. It rained for three days, and it rained hard while we were there. The rain let up a little bit that morning, and I was able to get some pictures of the place.

The host, Marilyn was quite a gardener and had some beautiful flowers growing around the place.

We were parked right next to the tasting room, and it was a quiet night. 

As I mentioned earlier, there were lots and lots and lots of kitties running around. Marilyn offered to allow us to take a couple of kittens with us. “Don’t tempt me,” was my reply. I would dearly have loved to take a picture of their pretty grapes, ready for harvest, but they were all covered with netting to protect them from birds. Instead, you’ll have to settle for this picture of their winery logo.

We saw Marilyn in the grocery store before we left. She noticed we were purchasing tomatoes, having used all of our CSA tomatoes. She asked us if we’d like some of the many from their garden. Would we?!? Yes! And so we left their place with some lovely tomatoes.

From there it was a rainy day of driving. Because of the drippy windows and windshield, I didn’t take many pictures. We passed into North Dakota.

There happened to be an oil train stopped on the tracks where the signs were. We’ve seen a lot of trains…long, long trains loaded to the max with coal and oil. This is an oil boom region. We have also seen some large refineries.

We noticed on the map that the roads in North Dakota are straight, mostly running east to west and north to south. That is because the region is flat. There aren’t a lot of mountains to cross over, and it allows the roads to run in straight lines. We passed through the Little Missouri National Grassland and grass is pretty much all you see.

We noticed the leaves are starting to change color

We’ve seen a few abandoned homesteads along the way. This was the first one that I had the camera ready and was able to get a picture. Sorry for the drippy windshield.

The Homestead Act of 1862 was created to encourage westward expansion. Any American who had never taken up arms against the United States could apply and public lands were given away free to those folks hale and hearty enough to settle and cultivate it. When we see these abandoned structures, I consider that a family once lived here and I wonder what their lives were like. No doubt life was hard in this climate and without modern conveniences. I wonder how long this dwelling was inhabited, and why it was abandoned. There are stories here, but no one to tell them any more.

As we approached the park, we started seeing more of the characteristic geology of the North Dakota Badlands

As we approached the park, we passed over the Scenic Little Missouri River and into Central time.

This was just before we reached the turn off for the park. 

Mike was so excited that his navigation unit had calculated our arrival time to include the time change that he missed the turn. It ended up being a good thing because just up the road, we could make a u-turn at this scenic overlook. If you look just left and above the center of the image, you can see the bridge. The national park encompasses everything you see to the right of the image.

Shortly after we crossed the park boundary, we spied this one lone bison.

We drove on just a little ways to find the campground where we dumped our tanks and filled our fresh water, then settled in for the night. After three solid days of heavy rain, it was wonderful to wake up to a sunny day.

There’s been no time for sewing so far on this trip, and there probably won’t be until we start heading south into warmer climates. For now, we’re moving east fairly quickly, while still taking some time to see the sights. There’s been plenty of time for needlework, however. I’m making progress on the center block for the Sundress quilt

The stitching is fairly time-consuming with all those tiny chain stitches, but I’m enjoying it. When we stop for lunch, Mike likes to take a short nap, and that’s the time I use for my stitching. Both of us are happy.

Okay...back to real time...we're on our way to Minot, North Dakota, where we'll spend the night, and I'll have some time to catch-up on blogging about what we saw within the national park boundaries. I'm hopeful of visiting one of the four quilt shops located in Minot as well. For now...back on the road. Hoping for internet access, and time for another blog post before we head across the border into Canada.

I've had very little time to proofread this post, but we need to get on our way, and so I'll apologize here for any typos. Like I said earlier, I'm blogging on the fly.