North Dakota

Greetings, my dear family.  I decided that I hadn't quite finished telling you about our trip home from Washington and I wanted to document it in my blog so you will have to put up with two more days of travel pictures.

 

This is a refinery just east of Williston, ND.  I talked to Paul and he said that some of the refineries have these fires on the ground and others have a smokestack with the fire coming out the top.  They are apparently "burning off" some gasses that come up with the oil.

 In western North Dakota, they have what they call "Man Cities" - various types of housing for the men who work in the oil industry.  Most of them look very new, which they are.  Some look like tractor-trailers with holes cut in the sides for windows.  One of the camps looked like the storage containers that you see on trains - they just stacked them one on top of the other, added some steps and a couple of windows and wala - a house.

 Saw lots of these trucks on the road hauling oil.

I have always wanted to see a field of sunflowers.  North Dakota had lots of them.  Wish we could have seen them a month earlier when they were still yellow.  Most of them were pretty dried up.  Very interesting crop.

We were driving through a small town in North Dakota (I think it was Stanley) and we passed by a cemetery.  I had seen this monument and told dad we needed to stop and investigate it because it looked like it had two sky scrapers on it.  Upon inspecting it a little closer, it was for a victim of the World Trade bombings.  Very unique - had the poem below on the other side.  Very interesting what you see when you're just looking out the window.

That's about it for North Dakota.  We stopped about midway through the state and visited with a friend from Arizona.  Had a great time with him (his wife was in Oregon with their granddaughter).  Ended the night in Grand Forks, ND.  Off to see Del and Judy in the morning.

 

 I have loved looking back on the pictures of our trip.  Maybe I'll even do another book for dad about "our trip home".  He really liked the last one I did - he says it jogs his memory about the fun times we had.

 

Have a GREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT Week!!!

 

Love, Gramma and MOM