Bailing on the Badlands
July 02, 2009
Filed in: North Dakota
Last night about 7, I made the executive decision to cancel our last night in Medora and head back to Bismarck a day early. Don’t get me wrong – the North Dakota Badlands are amazing, and we have had an incredible two days, but the boys are tapped out.
Yesterday, we went mountain biking, which was both very very cool and very very hard. I would say “there are mountains everywhere” but that’s kind of like arriving in Venice and complaining that the streets are full of water.
The only reason it would ever even occur to us to try biking through some of the most famously inhospitable country in the country (the U.S. Army guys used to call it “hell with the fires put out” ) is the famed Maa Da Hey trail, which we managed to poke the front wheels of our bikes onto, just enough to discern a) this is perhaps one of the coolest bike tracks in North America, and b) this is way, way beyond our abilities. Way. The track is 6 inches wide, with zero room for error. One wobbly wheel and you’re a goner. It’s for very experienced bikers in great shape, and we are neither.
The day before, we did a 2-hour loop around the national park, complete with 25-minute walk/hike, and saw bison (both far away in a herd and one big guy up really close), prairie dogs by the hundreds (I can see why the ranchers hate them – they’re really just slightly cuter squirrels with a funky communal living arrangement, but boy are they fun to watch), a majestic Northern Harrier who swooped up over the side of the cliff and almost, almost got a few Pairie Dogs (fun and interesting to watch them sound the alarm en masse), and, best of all, four horses from the famed wild herd in the park: a stallion, two mares and a foal so young it was still nursing and still figuring out how to walk. Totally cool.
Having seen and done all that, and wandered around the super-super-super corny “Western Town” franchise that serves as the anchor to the National Park (in Bismarck we complained about the chain restaurants that were everywhere; now we’d kill for an Applebee’s), the boys are done, and I can’t blame them. Alone, I’d do more hikes, give the bike thing another go, but they’re over it – even though I am forcing them on one more march this morning.
As my BFF N has said multiple times, we’re crazy in the first place to even try these “family vacations” (there’s a phrase that strikes fear in your heart), and I agree with her basic premise, which is that teenagers love their lives just as they are – they want to be home with their stuff and their friends and their routines. The only way to do this kind of trip and survive is to let nearly all the “other” rules go out the window – yesterday, we bought $20 worth of penny candy at Ye Olde Western Candie Shoppe and I let them eat it all, in one sitting. Yuck.
Today, we’re leaving one of the most wild and beautiful areas of the country and driving back to Bismarck so we can watch a movie in a darkened theater, which we could go anywhere in the U.S.A. – except of course for Medora, ND. And that’s okay – we got four days of mostly strife-free fun out of North Dakota, which is pretty good in my book. Just hoping a) to see more animals this morning and b) that the movie isn’t Transformers II.
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Drift Prairie
June 30, 2009
Filed in: North Dakota
So we’ve had three lovely days here in the Bismarck-Mandan metropolis. Setting aside the terrifying clouds and 50 mph winds that greeted us at the airport, and the all-caps severe storm warnings scrolling across the screen in our hotel room when we checked in (they’d had a tornado touch down less than 24 hours earlier), the weather has been cool and clear and dry, though everywhere there are signs of floods, both recent ones and the earlier ones from this spring.
So what’s it like? What do I think? I think it’s very, very hard to get a bead on North Dakota, and I like that in a state. It’s not at all like Texas or New York or California, which are right up in your face the moment you arrive, all “we’re all this, as you already know from our fabulous reputation that precedes us.” ND is almost the exact opposite, which means you have to work very hard not to look around and say, “this is nowhere,” and keep moving.
Apparently, they’re used to people saying just that, and doing just that, and they maintain something of a sense of humor about it. Taking a tour at a National Historic site pretty far out in the middle of the prairie – the place where Lewis and Clark met Sakakawea – when the guide found out we were from Boston, she guessed 1) you’re traveling cross-country 2) you’re here seeing relatives. When I told her it was 3), trying to get to all 50 states, she nodded and said, “Oh, yes, we hear that too, only a lot of people tell us we’re their very last state.” (Poor ND! Picked last for gym class and not afraid to admit it.) Then she pwnd me by proceeding to introduce a little boy in the front row who is trying to do all 50 by the time he’s 12. Thanks, kid, and good luck with that.
The most important thing to know is real North Dakotans speak exactly, exactly the way Frances McDormand did in Fargo – man did she nail that accent – and that it’s an incredibly musical and lovely and optimistic way of speaking. As a crusty New Englander, I’m normally loathe to engage in chatter during various small commerce transactions, but when I hear that someone has that real ND accent, I have been going out of my way to ask them something/anything in an effort to hear more.
The next most important thing, for me anyway, is the country outside Bismarck (and the country begins immediately outside – this is the state capital, and literally 7 miles from the very, very ugly capital building you can find cows and bales of hay and 2-lane highways and not a hint that you’re near any city, much less the capital) is some of the most beautiful land I have seen in America, but that might just be because I’m partial to open space and grace and gentle unfolding undulations rather than big, showy, jaw-dropping Scenery with a capital S.
This mid part of the state is “drift prairie” (how much do I love that phrase?), meaning it’s not the flat flat flat of the eastern part of the state (and of, say, Iowa to the southeast) and not the super-strange hills and buttes of the Badlands (where we are heading today). It’s all rolling, rolling grasslands for miles and miles. You can see very far in any direction --the sky really does go from one horizon to the other—but in between are valleys and swales and sudden graceful turns and jogs in the road, and everywhere grass. I read in a letter to the editor of the New Yorker that human beings are hard-wired to like grassy plains because the open spaces were safe – you could see your predators coming – and fertile – so you could eat. (The letter-writer was using this to justify Americans’ love of lawns, which is silly, but the factoid was appealing nonetheless.)
It’s topography that makes you want to be on a bicycle, or a horse, somewhere closer to the grass than a car, but moving more quickly than on foot. We saw a lot of ATV tracks running beside the roads, and though I normally abhore those things as noisy and planet-trashing, here you could see the appeal.
Two more things you notice right away: it’s always windy. Always. Obviously this is why their summer storms and winter blizzards are so bad. Only around the rivers do the trees grow naturally. It all reminds me of the Little House on the Prairie books, when Pa would disappear into the river bottom for a day or two to do some logging to build the outhouse or whatever.
And once you start looking, everyone seems either very Scandinavian/Norwegian/Northern European (big blonde gals everywhere) or slightly Native American (there are three tribes – the Mandan, the Hidatsa and the Arikaras, all nearly wiped out by smallpox and the American army. The story isn’t pretty).
That’s all what hits you upside the head about ND. Tomorrow: the murky rest, plus a genuine mystery: donde estan los yuppies?
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Swing State? You Betcha?
June 28, 2009
Filed in: North Dakota
No, North Dakota is not a swing state politically, it’s deep deep red and always has been. But it’s been swinging back and forth on the Tracy approval-meter, thusly:
First Swing: So all winter and spring, the whole 50th State enterprise was looking shaky. The enormous sums we plunked on the credit card last year for Alaska just would not/could not get paid down; we suddenly had a kid in high school and were hearing tales firsthand of just how awful the college cost situation is; and … what was the third thing? Oh, yeah, worldwide economic meltdown, that was it. Hard to justify spending unearned, nonexistent family dollars to fly anywhere in that environment, much less a place nobody really wants to go to.
Then I got a book deal. Not this book, not The 50th State, another book. A small book, but what the heck, a book deal! At 47! I took it as a sign from God that I should re-invest in my “writing career.” (The next time I get this thought in my head, someone please whack me hard with our 401K statement, willya?)
So late one night in March, I booked a trip for four to North Dakota. (The next time I do that, someone please etc. etc.) Loyal readers will recall
I’d already planned and nearly booked a trip to ND with my BFF, so I most easily could have just re-booked the same trail-riding-mountain-biking Western extravaganza for the family.
But I just couldn’t do it. We’d had a rough six months or so in Swellville, and T and I were both feeling crushed by work and money worries and general what-will-the-future-bring malaise, along with a bunch of physical stuff too boring to discuss, also some infrastructure issues with the house (leaking things and breaking things). More than anything in the world, I was longing for a week at the beach house we used to rent – quiet, private, pond-front, a short bike ride to the beach—just to read and bike and hang out.
Instead I had an unstructured but committed trip to North Dakota hanging over my head. Poor ND didn’t make it any easier by being flooded all spring – ew. W got a book out of his elementary school library, one of the “Our 50 Wonderful States” series, and it catalogued with shockingly frank honesty the state’s woes – low population, drought-followed-by-flood-followed-by-drought, and desperate yet chipper plans for increased tourism.
I spent hour after hour online, searching for something funky to do and somewhere funky to stay in ND. What I learned – there are only chain hotels in the entire state. And what’s to do? Hunting. Fishing. Hunting and fishing. Fishing and hunting. ND was making Alaska look like a positive earthy-crunchy hippie enclave. But we were booked to go, so go we went …
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Travel Stunts from Days of Yore
June 09, 2009
Filed in: The Home Front, The Way We Live Now
Here’s a 50th State-appropriate tidbit ganked in its entirety from The Writer’s Almanac. I like the bit about women getting “worked up” at more than 20 mph.
It was on this day in 1909 that the first woman to drive across the United States, Alice Huyler Ramsey, left New York City for San Francisco. She was 22 years old, a housewife from Hackensack, New Jersey. Her trip got a lot of media attention. In 1909, not many women drove cars, and some doctors thought that it was dangerous for women to even ride in cars because they would get too worked up at more than 20 miles an hour. Alice Huyler Ramsey drove 3,800 miles across the country in a Maxwell 30 with three other women, but she was the only one who knew how to drive. They drove for 41 days and used 11 spare tires. She wrote a book about the trip called Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron (1961). In 2000, she was the first woman inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.
This reminds me: I have never had a flat tire, and therefore never had to change one. Is it too late to learn? Can a person get through her whole life without a flat? That would be an admirable goal…
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Swellville, You’re Killing Me
April 10, 2009
Filed in: The Home Front, The Way We Live Now
It’s irony week here in Swellville, which, ironically, coincides with Holy Week. Last year I went all penitent; this year, the you’re-gonna-be-sorry karma is coming to me. To wit:
1) There’s been a pretty much steady stream of teacher hate going around town since the beginning of the budget season, crescendoing these last couple of weeks as we all wait to see if the teachers will be willing to give some kind of concession to prevent layoffs/classes being cancelled etc.
Normally I do not get the deep antipathy of the average taxpayer toward the average public school teacher. I just have never understood it, the hatred some people seem to have for teachers. For the most part, I have loved my kids’ teachers and think they should be compensated like normal human beings, but yes, even I am waiting for concessions and will be mighty pissed and disappointed if they don’t come.
So! With all that happening, I made the mistake Wednesday of attending the PTA meeting at the elementary school. And guess what job I got stuck with? Writing a little ditty for the Teacher’s Appreciation Lunch, just a short song, sung-to-the-tune-of-whatever, telling them how much we love them. You know, “Swellville teachers, you’re the one! You make learning lots of fun!” Etc.
I have been having some fun thinking of which songs and what lyrics I might choose if those concessions don’t come through. How about something punky? Like The Clash: “Should you stay or should you go?” Stones? “I see the school yard and I want to paint it black.” Etc.
2) I never understood or cared to understand a single thing about taxes, beyond that they need to be paid and that, in some vague way, the state ones at least go towards our schools and roads and bridges and a bunch of social programs that don’t affect me personally but are probably good for society as a whole.
But the deeper I get into this whole public-school-funding mess, the more of a wonk I’m becoming. And this year, like a lot of other school supporters, I’ve really come to realize that the two stupid income tax cuts Massachusetts got because stupid Mitt Romney was stupidly thinking of running for president and wanted to appear sufficiently Republican have effectively gutted public education and need to be revoked.
So yeah, there I am, advocating for raising taxes in the middle of an economic meltdown, and what happens? T and I get a notice in the mail (twenty-four single-sided pages of print! Hello IRS? I have some money-saving tips for you all, not to mention planet-saving) that we’re being audited. No good deed goes unpunished.
Next year, I’m going back to my Holy Week gastro-cleanse in hopes of warding off the various trolls of the world…