Minneapolis, MN>Fargo, ND>Sioux Falls>Wall, SD

A painted train car, Fargo, ND

The drive from Minneapolis to Fargo was flat and filled with fields. It's very early spring, as in fields just tilled with not a sign of green. Their color was an eerie mix of black mulch, which I believe is what's called Black Dirt, and the actual dirt, which is something closer to playground sand color. There was something lifeless about it, with not much promise of anything good or interesting growing out of it. 
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Technical challenges seem to follow me, a nice way of  admitting I'm useless at them. Having not used a real camera for a year or so, testing was done prior, batteries were charged and photos taken, no problem. And so in Fargo, a delightful city, I guess it's a city, a 5:30 wakeup to catch morning light produced a rush of hopeful images that the app won't let me transfer from my camera to iCloud. So, there are nary a photo of this sweet place that was welcoming and had a wonderful feel to it. No surprise, but it's easy to tell which towns and cities have universities and which don't. When I explained to the hotel check-in woman that North Dakota was one of the last states on my list of ones to visit, her reply, with a sigh and not looking up was "we get that a lot". It seemed not a good idea to tell her I was surprised how much I liked it.... .But it really is charming and dear with a nice personality. I was grateful for the middle eastern restaurant that was full of Ethiopian people having what looked like some kind of traditional meal. 

My traditional falafel sandwich, grilled is an inspiration.

Not the kind of pictures I thought I'd see in a restaurant wall in Fargo, but grateful for them

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Prairie grasses in my room. It was a room where it would have been nice to stay for a week, to write every day.

The famous wood chipper from Fargo

The drive on a southbound road to Sioux Falls, SD was empty, and there was little on the way, proving exciting when a billboard advertising truck parts or choosing life appeared. There were only a few gas stations on this appx 3 hour drive, one had to be mindful. I started thinking about pioneers a lot, and Thomas Jefferson, and his laying out towns with north/south roads equally distant from each other, as with east/west. According to one of my subjects from picturelife books days, a church and bank was planned every so many miles and then a church, bank, store and hmmm, maybe saloon? every so many miles x 2. The good news is, it's hard to get lost in this part of the world, I'm not sure what the bad news is. Laura Ingalls Wilder came to mind when I saw a brown sign saying that next exit was her house in De Smet, South Dakota. I got off, excited to move some cherished memories from imagination to reality, but it was 50 miles from the exit, so I bailed and got back on the freeway, instantly mad at myself that I didn't have the patience. But in fairness to me, my butt was taking on the shape of the car seat. So, instead I stopped in Brookings, which was a nice little town with a big grain storage facility (all towns seem to have them, I believe someone told me they're usually bought and maintained by a cooperative of farmers) and very pretty and tidy streets, a nice downtown. When ordering an iced coffee, the woman who served me asked if I was from there, I replied in the emphatic negative. She went on anyway, saying she wasn't "from around here" and asking a question about all the flags that had been put out for Memorial Day weekend.  I told her I didn't know, and when I asked her where she was from, she told me Watertown, which was the only other "town" I'd passed before Brookings. Funny. how frameworks vary. I thought about that for a long time. 

I also thought about a Louise Erdrich book I'd recently read called The Mighty Red. It wasn't so great, I'm not sure I'm a fan of her writing, but I pictured all the things that happened in the book taking place in the places I was passing in South Dakota. I also thought a lot about what a losing battle it is for these farmers who are buying seeds from agribusiness that don't allow them to grow anything else, and require they advertise them at their fields. The farmers also have to pitch in for the grain silos and super-expensive machinery, then be dependent on the vagaries of our changing climate. That's an awful lot of risk they have to carry with not so much reward. It's too bad it isn't shared with those who make the profit. 

Brookings, SD

Sioux Falls does have falls, and while being mesmerized by them, I was surprised to see a fish about a foot and a half long try to jump up them, I mean, there was just no way. So of course I stayed to see if it would try again and it did, but then that was the end of that. Taps for the fish, or at the very least a serious concussion.  

The town of Sioux Falls is trying, but there's an air of despair hanging over it. The Main Street is struggling but OK, but I always like to get away from the Main Street to get a better feeling of the town. On my evening walk, I passed mini casinos, bars, liquor stores, really nothing much positive going on. The church had a broken window. I passed the AA group outside smoking and looking none too happy, and then a homeless camp, people fighting with each other and a few drunks wandering around. Sious Falls could maybe had take a Camus' The Stranger defense, it was so hot. 

​A good thing that came out of stopping there is that I retired early and watched a show with Stanley Tucci in Naples talking to food people about food. One chef had no money when he was young and would make pasta a la vongole running away (I've forgotten how you say it in Italian). He had a wonderfully big pan, about 16 inches across and sides 3 inches high. He threw some olive oil in there, garlic, a hot pepper and some parsley stems, cooked them for a minute. He then added some cherry tomatoes, which he put in a bowl of water and pierced, then squeezed, threw them in and most excitingly, fished out of a nearby bucket, four rather large rocks he'd taken out of the ocean, chosen because they had more seaweed on them. He plopped them in the pan let it cook for a bit, put in some angel hair, then some sea water and did his thing. How clever!  

Sioux Falls

​There's always this internal battle between choosing to stop and getting to wherever you're going, which in my case was undefined. This time around, if I chose not to stop, it was because I didn't want to be in the car anymore, versus before, feeling as though I needed to get somewhere. So, after regretting not having gone to De Smet, the following day was filled with good stops (and a lot of driving) but was perfect. Prairie Village is located about 45 minutes north of I-90, and was a beautiful drive through some cultivated fields, but also some prairie, with the beginning hint of hills. There were trees here and there which made it more interesting. The grass was a combination of green or the light brown or white from last season. I was the only one at the village and there was zero supervision, it would have been easy to make off with an anvil or tooth extractor. Over time, these wee buildings have been donated by people within the community, most of Junius, where they were located. There were many "little houses on the prairie" and the books came back to life. What a hard life!  While I appreciated being unsupervised and not having an audio tour pushed on me, the buildings are in a state of disrepair, which was sad. In any case, I felt lucky to be able to enjoy it for an hour or so. ​

I'll spare you a look at the implements

One room cottage, four people lived here

Log cabin built by some Norwegian brothers

This was a church in a train, that went around from place to place, baptizing, marrying and converting all the wild men out here

Next stop was on the way back to I-90, America's only Corn Palace, which actually is decorated with different color ears of corn, used similarly to broken shards of pottery in a mosaic. There's an auditorium and there were many events that happen there. Yes, I bought a T Shirt.

Exterior, they were replacing the sheaths on the right. We The People is all corn! It actually is pretty impressive.

More ears of corn

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I've been reading Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, and in one of them, a character talks about how quickly moments of happiness pass. It made me think of an observation I may have shared, about the inverse relationship between how long it takes/painful it is to get or achieve something, and then how quickly the victory goes away, no matter how hard I try to keep it in my head and heart. That was the case with reaching Oacama, a destination I've been dreaming of for almost 40 years. Not really the destination itself, more the state of mind of just getting in a car and saying the hell with it and going to this random place. While it wasn't the straight drive down I-90 from Boston which I'd always imagined, t is the same road which was somehow exciting and joyful for a few minutes.  I almost didn't stop in Oacama, and really, it's nothing, but I did, and took a bad photograph.  I guess someone else might say I checked something off my bucket list. Doesn't really capture it though. 

Oacama, SD

That part of I-90 was starting to get really beautiful. It's a white road and the land was beginning to have soft hills, undulating, sometimes cultivated but more often prairie, occasionally spotted with trees. As I drove west, the undulations got bigger and the clouds came in, making a beautiful patchwork of colors with the brown of fields, sand colored grasses from last season, winter green, spring green and every now and then some Celtics green. I actually exclaimed out loud to myself. To me, this is some of the most beautiful land anywhere. I can't say enough about the part of South Dakota west of Sioux Falls to Wall. Sadly, it's really hard to take photographs that give an idea of what it's like, especially on an iphone. The next post will be about the Badlands and Custer State Park and there will be some there, but really, they don't do justice.

Wall Drugs is obnoxious, with so many signs littering the otherwise pristine landscape, and upon arriving in Wall, it was clear that really they are the only game in town. Otherwise, it's only little houses with big trucks parked in the driveways. And of course grain silos. But Wall is HQ for the Badlands and so, that''s where you stay. And steak and pancakes are what you eat.

Outside Wall Drug

Jackelope

Proverbial and scenic grain silos, Wall SD

Driving to the Notch Trail in the Badlands, you enter the Federal area and then there's a road that loops through the park. When first entering, it's dramatic prairie, with so many bird sounds,  and then all of a sudden, those dramatic and craggy rocks. Imagine those pioneers trotting along the grasslands in their wee wagons, la la la, making progress and then all of a sudden, oh dear, now what? Best guess was they sent the oldest son ahead to sort things out.

This is the prairie part. What you can't see in photographs are the gentle hills

Here are the rocks that draw people. I much preferred the prairie

Both together

There's one more post coming, but as I'm off tomorrow at the crack, I'm in a looking back frame of mind. It's been a great trip. It's tiring figuring out sleeping arrangements every afternoon, but I prefer it to being committed to somewhere that shapes the day. It's also dreary carrying everything into the rooms and then packing it up and putting it back in the car. It's also many days not being around anyone to talk with for any significant amount of time. And I've had more peanut butter and marmite sandwiches with bread I bought in Michigan than I might have chosen. My bottom is misshapen, hopefully not forever. But it's been so worth it to see another corner of this endlessly fascinating and interesting world. I love that I'm sitting on my king sized bed at the  Courtyard Marriott in Elder Box, SD, situated in some of the ugliest road rash imaginable, yet the smell of cow shit that permeates so much out here, has found its way inside. ​