Plot Twist

Friday:

I spent the whole day driving eastward across Montana and North Dakota. The incredible thing about the day was the consistency and speed of the unstoppable windstorm spanning at least 3 states. Here I am pictured in Theodore Roosevelt National Park overlooking Painted Canyon in ND.
It began the previous day; it was breezy in Grand Teton Park and by the time I got to Yellowstone, it was blowing strong, steady, and cold. I felt gusts encouraging my pick-up toward the ditch as I drove up the dark, winding, two-lane highway from Wyoming into Montana. I took it easy and had to pull over often to let annoyed locals overtake the timid tourist. Thursday night I slept in the bed of my truck on a luxuriously thick foam mattress in a rest stop east of Billings, MT. The wind rocked and jostled me all night long, but I was so cozy.

As I drove across North Dakota Friday, I had a few noteworthy experiences. One was I obtained the best gas mileage ever as the wind pushed hard from the West; I went 516 miles on one tank! Another was at one point, I rolled down the window and stuck my hand out at 75 miles per hour. It was quite eerie that I only felt a slight wind push my arm back. So I called 511 for a weather report and it was blowing 11-33 mph, gusting to 56. Then I spoke to a motorcyclist at the visitor center at Theodore Roosevelt Park and I asked him which direction he was traveling. He had been westbound for two days and said it was horrible. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this motorcyclist had survived all 20 tornadoes North Dakota had the previous day!

The other important event of the day is that I arrived at my destination in Backus, MN!!! I got to see Cousin Paul and the 7 other members of his immediate family and heard stories of the tornado that touched down and ripped up Wadena, MN on Thursday about 50 miles down the road. It took out their high school along with 200 some odd homes and some farms too. My cousin Nathan spent Friday pitching in attempting to free a whole lot of turkeys from beneath a collapsed barn on a farm run by friends of his wife Missy.

Here is the photo of Wadena that appeared in the local paper on Friday. This looks all crazy and scary to me; I don't understand why they can't just have some nice earthquakes like normal people. When the tornado warning comes in, I'll be the moron standing in the door jamb. I'm so happy to be here(?).













Remember that cabin from a few posts ago that I was considering buying and moving to my lot?? Just as I crossed the Minnesota border on my way in, I realized I was going to drive right past it, so I called the owner and set up a viewing. Pictured here is one of the reasons I'm not going to buy it. The place was trashed in every sense of the word. There were piles of garbage inside. But more importantly, the moving service I called (rumored to be the cheapest in town) wanted $6,000 to get it to my lot. So I've made a decision to start from scratch and build the picture in my mind. Once I'd made up my mind, I felt relieved and excited and then realized buying someone else's structure would have been a detrimental compromise to my vision. So once again, I'm walking on air considering the possibilities...... Friday was a really great day, but I can't wait to tell you about Saturday!