Lost and Found

North Dakota. What can I say about North Dakota? Well, the coffee and the meals were big and hot and cheap. The roads were long and strait and hot. I wrote a poem.

Come walk with me, through the stinging nettle fields

down to the swamp with the shopping bag trees

and the rusted cans and the styrofoam pieces.

We'll throw stones and laugh and tell each other

that the needles can't sting us

that the garbage belongs

that we can find beauty in the ugliest places.

The campground had had a flood the year before and many
of the picnic tables never found their way home.

Have you ever seen a place where the tallest point of land is the landfill? We have. And although it's poetic, it still stinks.

We did find a really great park in North Dakota called Turtle River. We went for a long hike through forests and plains and got completely lost. Eventually we made our way out and realized we'd walked most of the park's snowshoeing and mountain-biking trails. For a navigation officer and a self-proclaimed outdoorsman, my sense of direction is questionable.

The REAL outdoorsman

We also tried some new cooking techniques from Paul Tawrell's Camping and Wilderness Survival (which Sonia got for me after I oogled it at a friend's apartment). Breakfast was the theme and bacon and eggs were on the menu. The bacon and eggs were cooked in a paper bag over the hot coals, and the rest of the eggs were cooked in half-onion layer cups. Seems a little bizarre in writing but it was tons of fun and really delicious.


After chatting with some locals in a McDonald's (we were there for the Wi-fi...ok...and the cheeseburgers. Don't judge us) we decided to travel along the northern shore of Lake Superior rather than south. Canada here we come!