Garrison, North Dakota to Malta, Montana

The obvious thing about North Dakota and Eastern Montana is vast prairie adorned by crops of corn, wheat, sunflowers and soybeans.  If you look beyond the obvious, there are some prominent features of interest:  the Missouri River, remembrances of Lewis and Clark and Native Americans, Theodore Roosevelt and his Badlands, and oil. 

The Missouri cuts through the middle of the area, gathering force as it goes.  Its human use in this area is not for navigation but for energy and flood control as it transports of the melted snow of the eastern Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico.  I took in two earthen dams that dominate the area and manage the human uses.  Garrison Dam in North Dakota is two and a half miles across at the top and is the fourth largest earth-filled embankment dam in America.  The Fort Peck Dam in Montana is  four miles across and is the largest dam in America, earth-filled or otherwise.  Because of their vast size, I didn't get any usable pictures of the dams.  They both have spillways, but they are adjacent to the dams and are used only to keep flood waters from going over the tops of the dams.  The spillway for the Fort Peck Dam has only been used to pass water downstream five times in 74 years.  The Fort Peck Dam was started as an anti-depression Public Works Administration project in 1933.  The Garrison Dam was started in 1947.  Both were supervised by the Army Corps of Engineers and were built by hydraulically dredging the river and lake bottom both upstream and downstream from the dams.  They are truly phenomenal engineering feats from another era.

I think they should rename Montana "Lewis and" and North Dakota "and Clark".  From 1804 to 1806 they hauled themselves and the crew across this territory and back in answer to the question:  "Is there any there there?"  Of course there was, starting with a lot of Native American tribes who had been there a long time.  The new natives, a lot of German-Americans and Irish-Americans and Scandinavian-Americans, have done exceptional job of remembering the Corps of Discovery's trek to there.  L&C and corps spent the winter of 1804-05 with the Mandans near present-day Washburn, North Dakota.  A non-profit foundation has established an interpretive center at that location, which has numerous artifacts from the period (though few things from the expedition itself) and it tells the expedition's story well.  The interpretive center also described subsequent expeditions to the area by Prince Maximillan and by George Catlin.  The prince was primarily interested in the botany, and Catlin was primarily interested in making pictures of the natives and the buffalo.

Here are some of George Catlin's pictures I liked:

I had my own up-close experience with buffalo when I camped overnight at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in west North Dakota.  Two of them kept me company in the campground, which was otherwise not populated by humans.  Because the temperature got down to 26 degrees, we were all primarily concerned with keeping warm. 

The North Dakota badlands aren't as spectacular as the South Dakota badlands (which I haven't seen yet except in pictures), but they're still pretty special.

North Dakota Badlands in
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
North Section

Little Missouri River,
Theodore Roosevelt National Park

And then there were a lot more buffalos:

And a small big horned sheep, which looked like it had been recently shorn.





Williston, North Dakota, is a classic boomtown, with everything new and construction activity going on everywhere.  It is so new that there is only one McDonalds in an area that would normally have four or five.  There was a sign out front for "help wanted" and inside you could see why, as the line was long and so was the wait.  Probably McDonalds-style wages don't suit a boomtown's scale and prosperity. 

The thing that struck me about Williston was its orderliness.  In a lot of ways it looked like an Army post.  Everything--trucks, trailers, equipment, pipe, was in orderly rows.  The main architectural feature was the rectangular box, sans windows.  There was a lot of mud and dust, but that can't be helped given the number of trucks.  The one thing you don't see is any spilled oil.  This is a very efficient operation.

Day 10 mileage: 222
Day 11 mileage: 317
Cumulative mileage: 3,434

Duluth, Minnesota to Garrison, North Dakota

I am traveling across the Great Plains.  I will be traveling across them for two more days.  Lots of people have tried to say something interesting about the Great Plains, and lots of people have failed.  I join their ranks.  I'm listening to audio books while I drive, so my mind has been in Sydney, Australia (Jo Nesbo's The Bat), and previously had been in Langley, Virginia (Alex Berenson's The Midnight House). 

The highlight yesterday was a stop at the Geographical Center of North America, identified as being in Rugby, North Dakota.  For historical purposes I recorded the site:

 

The interesting thing about North Dakota at the present time is that it is currently the Saudi Arabia of America--a bounty of oil and gas.  I'm heading to Williston, in the northwest corner of the state, which is the center of the action.  The temperature will be about 50 when I arrive, so I intend to camp.  With a storm due early next week, it will be my last camp for about a week.

Day 8 mileage: 239
Day 9 mileage: 340
Cumulative mileage: 2,835

Rice Lake, Wisconsin to Duluth, Minnesota

I took a circuitous route to get from Rice Lake to Duluth, which are only 130 miles apart.  The purpose was to see some of the country in the upper part of Wisconsin.  In the process I got a good idea of what is meant by "snow flurries."  It is very pretty, light snow.  But if it keeps coming down, it adds up.  Here are a couple of pictures I snapped along the way that give an idea of what the first snow of the season looks like.

The first snow has something of a divine quality about it.  The natives (indigenous and otherwise) talk about it bringing order to the world.  As best I can tell that means it covers all of the clutter and simplifies everything.  There is a pleasant uniformity to it. 

I passed through the forests of Wisconsin, at elevations up to 1400 feet, and then descended to the Lake Superior shore at 600 feet and very little snow.  I was promised something called a "snow shower" overnight, but whatever it was it didn't leave any snow on the ground Tuesday morning.

I spent Tuesday on a leisurely drive up the North Shore are of Lake Superior, which is one of the most scenic roads in the USA.  I walked an easy trail to Gooseneck Falls, and got these pictures. 

Middle Gooseneck Falls

Lower Gooseneck Falls

Angler below Lower Gooseneck Falls

Lower Gooseneck Falls

The most prominent town along the route is Grand Marais, Minnesota, which is quant and up-to-date commercial.  I compare it to Morro Bay in California.  It is sufficiently far from Duluth to be a nice weekend getaway.  There is a ski resort at Lutzen, a mere three miles from Lake Superior.  I checked it out and while it wasn't Colorado, it was on a par with New England ski resorts. 

I finish off with a couple of pictures of the Lake Superior shoreline.

Shore scene at Flood Beach

Shore at Grand Marais

Day 6 mileage:  310
Day 7 mileage:  283
Cumulative mileage: 2,256

Canton, Missouri to Rice Lake, Wisconsin,

This post covers two days of traveling along the Great River Road that skirts the Mississippi River.  This has been a pre-occupation of mine since I read Jonathan Raban's book, Old Glory, about his trip from Minneapolis to New Orleans in a small boat with a cabin and an outboard motor.  I will state the obvious that he had a much better view of the river than I did.  What we had in common was in getting a sense of the commerce and the various attractions of the river.   Along much of the route the river channel takes up only a minor part of the territory dominated by the waterway.  There are islands and marshes and sloughs and lakes behind dams and locks.  Trains of BNSF run constantly, two or three an hour around the clock, along the eastern shoreline.  Trains of Canadian National (which owns the old Illinois Central) run less frequently along the western shoreline.  The barge tows are less than half the size of the ones south of St. Louis and, at least at this time of year, a lot less frequent.  The corn crop is currently being harvested from Missouri to Minnesota, so a lot of the rail traffic is grain cars heading south.

One topic that Raban first alerted me to was the now-defunct pearl button industry that was centered around Muscatine, Iowa.  The industry was started in that city by a Swiss-German immigrant in 1891, and at its height accounted for 40 percent of the world's button production.  The last pearl buttons were manufactured in Muscatine in 1967.  So how and why did they make pearl buttons?  They were drilled out of the shells of fresh-water mussels indigenous in great abundance in the rivers and streams of the Midwest.  They had survived the influx of population because the mussel was inedible by humans.  If fact, after they were harvested for their shells, the mussels were steamed to open them, and the animal inside was discarded or used for animal feed.  After the 1930's industry went into decline as shell buttons were replaced as fasteners by zippers and buttons made of plastic.  What's left is the chronicle of this chapter of American commercial history described in the Pearl Button Museum, which I visited in Muscatine. 

It turns out that Muscatine is and has been a commercial overachiever.  The pearl button industry had been a timely follow-up to the lumber milling industry which was petering out in the Midwest in the latter part of the 19th century.  Muscatine is also the founding home of the HON furniture company, the Bandag tire retreading company and the Stanley Group, an engineering/consulting organization.  Monsanto has been making herbicides here since the 1970s, including Roundup for the past 20 years, and HJ Heinz has a large tomato-processing facility.  The latter is the source of the area's latest demographic change, an influx of Latino people, who now comprise 16 percent of the city's population.  The facility produces Heinz Ketchup, at a rate of 70 to 80 truckloads a day. 

In the mid-1800's, Muscatine was the home of the largest black community in Iowa.  Alexander Clark, Sr., a barber, lumber salesman and real estate speculator, lived there.  Clark helped organize Iowa's civil war black regiment, the 60th United States Colored Infantry. In 1868 he sued to desegregate Muscatine's school.  His son, Alexander, Jr., was the first black person to graduate from the University of Iowa.  Alexander, Sr., the university's second black graduate, at age 58, was appointed US Ambassador to Liberia in 1890.

Muscatine is truly an interesting place.

I camped Saturday night at Wyalusing State Park, south of Pierre du Chein, Wisconsin.  A surprising thing to me was that in spite of weather--intermittent rain--and the temperature--30's and 40's--the campground was nearly full.  A second surprising thing to me occurred the following morning when I found that the facilities had already been closed for the season, despite the heavy use of the campground.   So for my $24 nonresident fee I had primitive camped for 12 hours. 

I stayed in a motel Sunday night, which was just as well since when I arrived in Rice Lake, there had been snow flurries falling for an hour.  The motel clerk said, "you think this is bad, you should have been here last May when we had 17 inches of snow in one day." 

Day 4 mileage:  333
Day 5 mileage:  251
Cumulative mileage: 1,663

Crowley's Ridge, Arkansas to Canton, Missouri

I spent a pleasant day driving the rolling hills of the Missouri Ozarks.  The elevation of the road runs from 600 feet to 1300 feet, and most of the way is on Missouri Route 19. Most of the area consists of the Mark Twain National Forest with two rivers, Jack's Fork and the Current, designated at the Ozark National Scenic Riverways.  The prinicipal activity on the rivers is canoeing.

I headed to the Alley Springs Mill, which is located five miles west of Eminence, Missouri.  The mill is quite picturesque.  The beauty of the setting is enhanced by the effort the traveler has to make to find it in order to take the requisite pictures.  It was built in 1894 and no longer operates.  The building functions as a museum run by the National Park Service.  Though the shutdown was lifted and the area was open to visitors, the museum was not open when I visited.



Louisville, Mississippi to Crowley's Ridge, Arkansas

This was a day of a lot of driving and not much action.  My one scheduled stop was to see Casey Jones' Home and Railroad Museum in Jackson, Tennessee.  It looked so kitschy and commercial I didn't bother to stop.  Casey Jones was a legendary hero from about a century ago who.  as an engineer on a runaway train sacrificed himself to save the passengers in the train. 

The latter part of the day I spent crossing Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers delta country.  It was very flat and all under cultivation.  The primary crop appears to be rice. 

I finished the day camping at Crowley's Ridge State Park.  Crowley's Ridge is an odd geological feature that runs about 150 miles on a north-south line from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to Helena, Arkansas.  It rises about 150 feet about the delta country, which surrounds it on all sides.  The rolling hills have the eerie appearance of a civil-war battlefield (think Shiloh or Manassas).  Sure enough, the Battle of Chalk Bluff was fought here on May 1 and 2, 1863. 

Crowley's Ridge was formed as a glacial loess deposit.  It is thought to have once been an island between the ancient Ohio and Mississippi Rivers before they altered courses perhaps millions of years ago.  There is evidence that uplift is currently taking place.  The Crowley's Ridge Parkway National Scenic Byway runs along the Arkansas section of Crowley's Ridge

Daily miles:  382
Cumulative miles: 679

Pensacola, Florida to Louisville, Mississippi

I made it on the road today, and it feels good.  Most of the territory covered was familiar up to Philadelphia, Mississippi.  I proceeded 25 miles past there to Louisville, Mississippi, and Legion State Park.  I am all by myself in the primitive camping area, which means vault (outhouse) toilets and no electricity or water. It is actually very pleasant.  Just me and the crickets. 

Louisville Mississippi is a rather small city of 7000 souls, half white and half black, with a couple of notable features.  It is the home of Taylor Machine Works, which produces all sorts of fork lifts.  Based on the size of plant, about half the adult residents must work there.  The other feature is the Strand Theatre, which has incorporated in its façade a swastika.  Apparently the construction of the  building predated the Nazi era.  But still , , , ,

2013 Trek Around the USA

Tomorrow I begin a new adventure.  It will be my first solo trip since March 2013, and my longest since my 60-day trip in 2011.  The route is another counter-clockwise circle:  heading north to Duluth, then west to Spokane, then south to San Luis Obispo, then further south to Tucson, then east to Pensacola.  The 35-day itinerary is set out under the heading "Trip Plans".

I am going to try to camp about every other night, usually at a state park campground.  A big question mark will be the weather.  The northern part of the trip is already experiencing highs in the 40s and there is some snow in the Rockies.  Other than the temperature falling below freezing at night, the weather shouldn't be a issue until I reach western Montana on October 27th.  At that point, I will have to determine whether I can travel back and forth through the Idaho panhandle based on snowfall.

Mustang is ready to roll
in front of our temporary residence

There is no real theme for this trip, and the stops I am making are eclectic.  I had intended to visit southwest South Dakota and northern Wyoming, but this area has already experienced one heavy snowfall and is about have another one.  In addition, the government shutdown has closed the national parks I had intended to visit.  There will be another time for that.

The trip in 2011 followed my retirement from the law and my hearing officer duties.  This trip follows another significant life event, in that Julie and I sold the big house we had occupied--and where we had raised our children--for 31 years.  Sure I miss it, but its a thing and there will be another thing in time.

The first day journey will take me to Legion State Park just south of Starkville, Mississippi.  It is supposed to rain during the day, but hopefully the storm will have passed by the time to set up my tent.