Sunday, September 14, 2003
HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN, JIGGITY JIG?
On Tuesday I drove across the entire width of the state of Montana, and down the length of the entire state of North Dakota. On Wednesday, I drove across the entire width of the state of North Dakota, and then down the length of the entire state of South Dakota. For the record, these big square states are, most definitively, exceedingly big . . . and square.
All the way through Montana the bright blue skies were filled to bursting with a dizzying array of every type of cloud imaginable. It was like a grade-school biology quiz: nimbus, cumulus, cirrus, and the heavy-bellied thunderheads. And going down through the Theodore Roosevelt State Park, the North Dakota badlands, at night, I came over a rise and down into the place where you see the amazing rock formations for the first time traveling south on Highway 85. Deer moved in swift shadows, like whispered rumors, along the side of the road. The formations looked mysterious, like a lunar landscape, in the dark, and as I descended into the crater-like valley, the wind-carved rocks rose in strange shapes around me and suddenly the moon, almost full, came into view like a huge, hot, incandescent apricot. It sucked all the air out of my lungs as it pulsed there among the rock formations in the velvety black sky and left me breathless.
Pics of the Day: Theodore Roosevelt State Park - North Dakota Badlands, and Canadian Geese Sculpture on the Enchanted Highway - North Dakota, and finally Trapper Kettle Motel and Restaurant - Belfield, North Dakota (where I spent the night)
On Tuesday I drove across the entire width of the state of Montana, and down the length of the entire state of North Dakota. On Wednesday, I drove across the entire width of the state of North Dakota, and then down the length of the entire state of South Dakota. For the record, these big square states are, most definitively, exceedingly big . . . and square.
All the way through Montana the bright blue skies were filled to bursting with a dizzying array of every type of cloud imaginable. It was like a grade-school biology quiz: nimbus, cumulus, cirrus, and the heavy-bellied thunderheads. And going down through the Theodore Roosevelt State Park, the North Dakota badlands, at night, I came over a rise and down into the place where you see the amazing rock formations for the first time traveling south on Highway 85. Deer moved in swift shadows, like whispered rumors, along the side of the road. The formations looked mysterious, like a lunar landscape, in the dark, and as I descended into the crater-like valley, the wind-carved rocks rose in strange shapes around me and suddenly the moon, almost full, came into view like a huge, hot, incandescent apricot. It sucked all the air out of my lungs as it pulsed there among the rock formations in the velvety black sky and left me breathless.
Pics of the Day: Theodore Roosevelt State Park - North Dakota Badlands, and Canadian Geese Sculpture on the Enchanted Highway - North Dakota, and finally Trapper Kettle Motel and Restaurant - Belfield, North Dakota (where I spent the night)
Posted by Artichoke Heart | 4:39 AM |
