NW North Dakota

We got showered entering North Dakota near Fairview on the state line.  That is to say a huge truck full of gravel passed us going 70 or so and showered us with rock.  It felt like being on the wrong end of a gatling gun.  Result?  2 cracks and 4 chips in the windshield.  This area of the state is in a frenzy - black gold.  Every kind of semi is running full tilt on narrow two lane roads hauling pipe, tanks, construction equipment and gravel.  The predominant vehicle is a new white and mudcaked GMC or Dodge Ram - oil workers.  Graineries are being replaced with oil tanks.  Agricultural fields sport new oil pumps and the ground is being torn up not by tractor and plow but excavators, feverishly laying pipe.  Stopped in Watford City for some groceries and the shelves were pretty picked over.  Camps of trailers and RVs all over the place.  Rents and crime doubled and trippled.  The bank building in Watford is big and brand new.  We're on to Theodore Roosevelt National Park some 15 miles south - a labyrinth of coolies, draws, and canyons with spectacular colors this time of year.  Great campground.  Not many people.  Good hiking.  Even some buffalo.  One in particular that stood in the trail Ruth and I were on.  His tail was up which according to the ranger means he was about to charge or discharge.  We retreated!  Two nights in this wonderland.  We traded road noise for wind in the poplars and the distant thump thump thump of wells being drilled on the plateau above us at nite.  Got a cue from a fellow camper (who happened to be from McCall) about Ft Mandan so Ruth and I headed there yesterday (Thursday).  Enjoyed the Lewis and Clark Interpretive center near the fort then it was on to find a motel and much needed shower.  Found these luxuries in Aberdeen South Dakota where the sign reads, "1200 United Methodists Welcome you". Overwhelming!  Oh, en route we passed through Strassberg, ND, pop. 431, where the sign read "The Little German Town".  Underwhelming.  BUT birthplace of Lawrence Welk.  That raises the issue of sense of place again.  How did being raised on these forever, open and expansive plains affect Welk's music???  I think his rather tight, crisp and defined style was in reaction to his life in the wide open spaces where the only music is the wind in the grass and through the barbed wire.  On to Ruthton, Mn and the weekend with my favorite oldest sister and her husband Henry.  Later