Tuesday, October 15, 2024
(Addendum from Lori: there are NO photos from today because all we did was drive across the entire state of North Dakota, from west to east and the most interesting things we did were not photo-worthy!! So, instead, I will add a sunset photo from a previous day just to add some eye candy!)
Kathi here. Despite the VERY late night watching Mare of Easttown, which is rivetingly wonderful, we were up at our normal 7:30 this morning.
Today is moving day. Lori’s train leaves Fargo at 4am Thursday, which is really the middle of the night on Wednesday if you ask me, so we thought we’d spend a full day in Fargo to see what there is to see. We usually don’t travel on GW until much later on the last day so that we have at least a little time on our travel day to do something in the morning. I have clearly informed Lori that the next time she travels by train, if she has to leave this early it needs to be on Friday, NOT Thursday.
Checkout time for the Belfield Airbnb was not until noon, so we enjoyed a few hours couching and writing and gaming and chatting, but then it was time to pack up and get out. We had purchased enough food for the entire trip, so I focused on kitchen duty, getting it nice and clean and gathering everything we were taking with us on the kitchen table, while Lori packed up her bags. Then we switched and Lori took over packing up the kitchen stuff and loading it into the car while I packed. We are extremely efficient and productive as partners, and by 11:45am mountain time the place was clean, linens stacked by the washer, all trash bagged and placed in the outside bin, and we were loaded up and pulling out of the driveway.
The drive from Belfield to Fargo is almost 4 ½ hours (which is why we did this today and not in the middle of the night on Wednesday/Thursday). With fond memories of Salem Sue and the Enchanted Highway on our trip out to Belfield floating through our minds, we toyed with the idea of stopping at the Bismarck Zoo on the way to Fargo, but decided against it since we lose an hour on this trip and darkness seems to come rather early here.
The speed limit here is 75mph, and since I’m a rule breaker at heart, I locked the cruise control on 80 and we zipped through the plains. I-94 is as straight as an arrow from end-to-end in this state, and I was tempted to do 85, but as Lori mentioned yesterday, we have literally seen only three other Black people here—not surprising since Black people make up only 3.2% of the population. Although I’m sure North Dakota has some wonderful and kind state police officers who wouldn’t dream of dragging a Black woman out of her car for no good reason, the statistics here are not in my favor. According to https://policescorecard.org/nd
The wind here is a factor that has to be accounted for AT ALL TIMES. I have often wanted to burst into a chorus of Oklahoma on this trip. The number of syllables even fits. “Nooooooooooorth Da Ko Ta where the wind comes sweeping down the plains…” On this drive it was very apparent. I started noticing that the car swerved whenever I went through an overpass and realized that the wind was coming so hard from the south that I was automatically counterbalancing it to the degree that when it was blocked even for a second, my pressure on the steering wheel would send the car swerving to the right. Four and a half hours on the road isn’t really that long, but between the straight-as-an-arrow path with no diversity at all and the constant wind factor, it was somewhat exhausting. We stopped for gas about an hour from Belfield, and then for ice cream in Bismarck, after which Lori took a little snooze, but when she woke up she started a game of jeopardy. That was fun and distracting and helped a lot. However, I was very glad to see we were approaching west Fargo, where out Airbnb was located.
We arrived safely, and easily found our way to the “quaint little house” as our Airbnb was accurately described on the website, arriving at about 5:45 central time. We usually have good luck with our Airbnb choices (Maine is a glaring exception for those of you who may recall that adventure) and this one is also great. It’s an old house with character and is quite comfy with a nice large kitchen and living area. We alerted the host that we had arrived and moved everything in. We took inventory of what we might still need over the next not-quite-two days which mostly involved items to be able to make ourselves sandwiches for our trips home. I ran to the cute little grocery only 1 ½ blocks away while Lori made dinner (tonight it was chicken breast with dill and thyme, green beans, and couscous). We settled in to watch more of Mare of Easttown with our dinner. We got through 1 ½ episodes when I caught Lori snoozing again, so I declared it bedtime.
Girls Weekend days are great days even when all we do is move from one place to another!
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