Weekend Away: In Defense of North Dakota

Two weeks is longer than I am comfortable without having a new post. In my defense, it has been very busy around here. Nick started his MBA which has triggered my own desire to go to graduate school. This past weekend close friends had a wedding reception (wedding happened earlier this summer in Africa, which you can read about here)and the two day celebration coincided with a second set of good friends coming to visit from out of town. And the weekend before that, I went on a road trip with my friend Sam to North Dakota.
I had never been to North Dakota and I really wanted to go. I really want to go everywhere. I want to see as much of this world as I can and I think it's silly to not see every state in your own country. I have been to 26 states now, including the big ND. I think North Dakota is beautiful. It is completely underappreciated.

I am strugglnig now to find the right words to explain it to you. I often find that happens to me when talking about landscape. It amazes me how far you can see and how little is there. I mean that in the best way possible. Farms and shelter belts

sprinkled around fields of corn, sunflowers, wheat, and soy beans, just to name a few. It is a place where cows and turkeys out number humans.
To get to where we were staying we drove four hours West on a higway and then turned onto a much darker, more remote road for another hour and a half. At one point, Sam pointed out lights on the horizon. She said that was our destination and it was twenty miles away.

I took over 100 pictures, mostly from a car window and we were there for 48 hours. I could not stop. The fields,

the clouds,

the sunset,

it is something to be appreciated. The weekend in North Dakota was a great reminder of how many places there really are to see and how much travelling I really need to do.
I think Northen Calfornia is next. I'll keep you posted.