Touring North Dakota

I'm here for a few days before I fly out to southern California. My dad and I decided that we were going to take a drive. He thought that I would like to see the ski area in the region. I looked around and didn't have much hope. 'Flat as a pancake' as my family would say. No hills. Very few trees. The only things that stuck out on the horizon were big industrial farms, every now and again a town would show up and you could stand on one end and see where it ended. Like I said, not a whole lot of hope.

So we drove 1.5 hours to the turn off from the interstate and saw the road we thought we were going to take lead straight into a lake. It was closed. To my right I could see a flooded cemetary, and cringed. We weren't going to go that way. So we went to the south and approached the mountain from there. As we got closer, I still was wondering where this ski area was. Then all of a sudden, hills. There's about 15 miles square of hills where a river has torn into a plateau. Pretty country full of wind bent trees and scrub brush. The ski area was just that, an area. Not really a resort, or even on a mountain. But it looked like it could be fun to someone who had never been on a mountain before. I checked ticket prices, $35 a day, compared to $81 which is what the going rate was at Okemo last season. Although you'd probably get to noon on the little ski area and have skied everything twice, maybe three times.

On our way back we went through some farm country. Saw lots of little towns in the middle of nowhere. Can't say that it's really pretty out here, actually looks a bit like a disaster area with all the flooding. Dad says that happens every year. Think of a foot to a foot and half deep lake as far as you can see, and then driving on and on and there being only small patches of ground. That's about what it felt like. Roads just ended, you could see houses under the water, trees standing in lakes. It's quite incredible actually. Although, today we woke up and there's a snow storm, so maybe instead of a giant lake its' turned into a giant ice skating rink!