Day 5, Sleep helps

Sleeping well from 9:30pm to 6:30am EDT really helped my attitude, plus the green tea and homemade oatmeal cookies I brought, Plus support from my two Davids, one in WA and the other in VT...and the fact that the tornadoes and golf-ball-sized hail went west and south...sorry folks, I do feel for your pain...watched pictures on the weather channel last night...such awful life-changing things can happen in an instant. All I have to worry about is a silver-dollar-sized craze in the passenger side of the windshield, and I've already sent an email to Ray Gruver in Port Angeles, and David H has sent me contact information for the Honda dealer in Cedar Falls, near where we'll be staying for Mom's 90th birthday party.

Oh, if only my mind were a movie camera! The subtle changes traveling across the northern part of Montana and down through the middle of North Dakota, aiming for the light spots in the sky. I remember the heavy layer of dark clouds that could slowly gather and turn into points, giving birth to tornadoes.

Montana, scrubby hills in the distance

Montana, scrubby hills start to rise

North Dakota, giant windmills

I was delighted to latch onto North Dakota Public Radio...energy is a huge issue there...at least to Public Radio listeners. Through Montana and North Dakota I saw trains of tank cars and peradactyle pumps working next to holding tanks. Also the HUGE magestic windmills stretching far across the rolling landscape. I saw a truck, with a bed as long as three or four regular trucks, carrying one of the three blades for a windmill.

Green cropland in ND, we need the food they can grow

 Sad towns with gravel streets and no trees, prefab towns, thrown up to house workers for the oil industry, abandoned farms with broken windows...people need work. What is right? How about sharing more of the profits with the workers whose lives are being affected?

Fascinating to watch the landscape shift slowly mountains,  creases, lumps, flat. Wonder about the people who live there, spending all summer under the sun without shade...satellite dishes...I don't want to stereotype. The grizzled guys at the truck stop in Washington's mountains, talking about the devastation the forest fires were wrecking. 

When I used to just visit WA for vacation, the plane would fly in over miles of burning forests, and we are not even in the season yet.

Osaka Sushi & Hibachi dragon overlooks a tangle of highway interchanges in Fargo

Funny to eat fresh sushi in the middle of the country, but it tasted good after eating out of my cooler all day. Will I find the Space Alien Bar and Grill in Fargo? I saw one in Bismark, but was in the middle of 6 lanes of traffic, just before I got on I 94 and got hit by the rock.

I did see the World's Largest Buffalo in Jamestown, ND, but only from the car as I raced the storm. The Lewis and Clark explanation center is growing crops typical of the era...and promoting using Heirloom seeds--good cause against too much homogenaity. I posted that picture on Facebook..of the statues...I'm sure there are LOTS of stories about what happened here...so much of what looks like open land, but a radio program on trying to recover some acres of farmland from a lake that flooded...Are we thinking long term?