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3376 miles

Birthplace of Lawrence Welk

3368 miles

They dispensed glow in the dark condoms in the rest room even farmers like to kink it up now and again (or maybe it’s to confuse the sheep). The slogan was “Slip it on and watch the glow grow and grow”. Apart from the logistics of such an operation, it’s a pretty catchy slogan.

3071 miles

Standard leaving protocol. We always leave with more stuff that we came with, causing the logistics engineer (me) a headache.

This time we’re heading back with a great kitchen table we found at Big Lots in Grand Forks. Yes, we’re travelling another 2000 miles with 2 adults, 2 kids, all our gear and now a kitchen table. Further proof that we’re not your average family traveller.

Leaving sucks though. Intense homesickness and intense sadness at leaving yields many tears.

3036 miles

Behold the power of marketing. Most people don’t hesitate to eat a Slim Jim, the tasty meatish travel food. But buy a big package of the generically named and considerably cheaper “beef and pork bits and pieces” and it seems a little strange.

It’s not a real vacation until there’s a trip to the E.R.

After 12 hours of agony I finally caved and headed to the emergency room to attend to my gastric distress. By then I was sure surgery was in my future, maybe a gal bladder, maybe an appendix.

But it was just heart burn. Acid reflux, which I’d had some minor problems with in the past, came on something fierce. It was most likely triggered by either ice cream or coffee late at night. 2 little Zantac’s cleared it right up though.

My hometown ER has all grown up to. Nice place.

2553 miles

I really want to male a joke about a town sharing a name with a programming language, maybe wondering if pascal and fortran are right around the bend. But the joke just isn’t there.

Ada isn’t close to the best town name in the area anyway. That honor belongs to Climax, which I still giggle at everytime I pass it.

It’s interesting out here in the boonies how the size and importance of a town can be roughly determinded by having a traffic signal of some kind or not. I’m about 50 miles from an honest to goodness red/yellow/green signal. Probably 20 from a red blinking overhead stop light.

2515 miles

Looking forward to getting data again on my phone. I had no reason to think there would be coverage in Crookston but when there was so much data coverage on the way I started assuming. Even more surprising is the lack of coverage in Fargo and Grand Forks, reasonable enough sized cities. Hey, at least the phone works.

2452 miles

There is a frost advisory on for tonight. It’s almost July!

July!

But pleasant and mosquito infested is a step up from humid and mosquito infested.

2298 miles

Rothsay is home to the world’s largest prarie chicken.

2169 miles

Dropped Cass off for her independent leg of the trip. She’s set up in a sporty little Suzuki Aerio. I wonder for how many months I’ll be hearing about how she wants another car :)

On the way out of town I was listening to another favorite AM staple, the Clark Howard Show. It’s a consumer news and tips kind of thing and usually pretty interesting. He had a guy from Underwriters Labratory. They talked, among other things, about grilling. He said the biggest piece of advice he could give that would drastically reduce grilling accident is: Always grill outdoors. To which I flippantly say, those who grill indoors shouldn’t be polluting our collective gene pool anyway.