Day 5:Theodore Roosevelt Natl Park Tues 9.08.09
Our little Coleman tent survived a major downpour in the middle of night. Plenty of thunder and lightning for visual and sound effect fun. The raindrops splashing on my toes through the half zipped front door flap woke me up. I groped around and found my digital recorder....Barb woke up after a few minutes. Here is a short audio clip from our little bubble of a tent.
Barb: What're you doing Ruthie?
Ruthie: I'm recording. Any comments from the other side of the tent? [giggles]
Barb: We're still afloat. We're not awash.....[.....and more...]
Click to hear sound clip:TentRain_1.mov
We got up shortly after dawn to catch the light on our favorite multilayered mountain--now drenched with rain. Since the clouds were playing hide and seek we waited patiently admiring the changed landscapes. Three hundred and sixty degrees of deep nature.
BEFORE THE RAIN
AFTER THE RAIN
We packed up...drying everything as best we could. Very sorry to be leaving this beautiful place. Decided to drive for a few hours and catch breakfast somewhere along the way.
Sacajawea was kidnapped during a raid from her eastern Idaho Mountain Shoshone nomadic tribe as a young girl and taken to live as a slave in a Mandan village in eastern North Dakota. Fairly certain it was Fort Mandan. Oral history says her French Canadian "husband" to be (Toussaint Charbonneau) won her in a game of cards as a second wife. He was 40, she was 15. We would be traveling most of the day across this land where once she wandered--first as as terrified 10 year old girl on a horse traveling east to be sold as a slave and next as a young mother with the Lewis and Clark expedition traveling west. A bridge carried us over Lake Sacajawea. http://famousamericanindians4.homestead.com/Sacajawea.html
Stopped in New Town at Fort Berthold Reservation for breakfast. For some reason I like taking photos of breakfast!
Stopped into the post office for stamps. Lingered as long as I could in the annex transfixed...listening to two elderly men speaking a soft melodious ancient native language. Found Barb later on at the local drugstore. We needed new reading glasses and ear plugs for me (to drown out night sounds) and a few other essentials. I commented on the sweet accents the women waiting on us at the counter had. "OUR accent!" they said. "Ha! YOU two are the ones with the accents!" We all started laughing. They were right out of the movie "Fargo". They thought we were right out of a movie sitcom like Will and Grace except called Grace and Grace. I was amazed that we all had a conversation about sexuality. Once again, "Do they or don't they?" Thank goodness (for once) for mass media culture and movies, performers and comediennes like Ellen Degeneres, k.d.lang, Melissa Etheridge, films like Boys Don't Cry, The Philadelphia Story, Will & Grace (for better or worse), Two and a Half Men, to name a few. At least a dialogue can start between strangers in a place as remote as New Town North Dakota, population 1400. I do not think that would have been possible 10 years ago. Barb eventually gets around to mentioning her husband, but enjoys playing the curiousity card with provocative behavior like pinching my behind.
Pushed on along rural Route 83 through some of the most beautiful verdant rolling hills dotted with big round hay rolls. We really needed to push so could not take the time to stop and shoot. Took a GPS photo from the car window to remember for a future drive.
Lots more to tell and show before this day is over.
Total miles today: 568.