Dickinson, ND

Loooooooooong day today! We pretty much covered Minnesota and North Dakota in a 12 hr brutal push. As my parents warned, most camp grounds out west are near the rail road tracks, probably because most towns are right near the rail road tracks. The train went through before 6 am so we were up and on the road by 7, pushing through until after 7 pm, though it may be a different time zone here, so technically it may only have been 6 here. I'm all confused. Nothing new there! It doesn't help that we got turned around AGAIN today due to poor directions from the kid at the campground we stayed at last night. The problem is that with the truck and camper, if you get turned around it can take a half hour or longer to get straight. You can't just turn that thing around on a dime. As a matter of fact, it often takes a trip around the block to get straight, and we don't have maps of every little spot where we get going the wrong way. Alice (our stupid gps) isn't always helpful in getting out of trouble either. She only wants to give you the current turn, not a map of the whole area so you can figure out the better way yourself. She also doesn't always have the correct streets which doesn't help either. We hit at least 3 streets today that she wanted us to turn on, but there was no street there! The kids have been after me for ages to get a gps and they're seeing now that it isn't the ultimate solution they thought it was. Give me a map and mapquest any day!

I will say that the drive today was BEAUTIFUL! I don't think photographs will begin to do justice to all we saw today, though the kids sure tried to wear out the camera with taking photos! I wish we had time to stop and take photos ourselves! One of these days I'd love to take the time to really travel the US and just stop and see all that we'd like to see. That will be after the kids are gone! Oksana and Andrei are traveling fairly well but Sergei is... Well, he's just Sergei.

Back to scenery for a minute. Through Minnesota the lakes, rolling hills and flowers were just stunning. Must be something about the road that the black eyed susans really liked. They lined the road through much of Minnesota, hugging the road side, welcoming, waving, raising their faces to the sun. It was amazing! Parts of the country side were flat as a pancake. I've never seen anything quite like that, though I understand that other parts of the country are even worse! After the hills of NY it was actually quite beautiful to be able to see so far! It was NOTHING compared to North Dakota though! The MILES of farmland on all sides was just breath taking! The kids were snapping pics as fast as they could but I don't think they could begin to capture it! Andrei and Sergei worked for Mr. Dunton at home doing hay but they saw more round bales of hay today than I think they've ever even hauled in square bales at home. Just AWESOME! I've never imagined farming on such a scale. We drove for HOURS through hay fields and pastures with more of the same as far as the eye could see and as the kids said, it was like being up in an airplane you could see so far.

Back to the kids. I have Andrei and Oksana with me in the car. They're doing a pretty good job of keeping themselves entertained between videos and games on Andrei's computer, card games, Apples to Apples, taking pictures and keeping track of license plates (42 states and 5 provinces so far, probably would have been more if I could wake them up BEFORE I saw one fly by and if we hadn't had so much rain the second day). Rodney has Sergei and the dogs. His drive hasn't been quite so pleasant as mine. A friend gave us a whole pile of CDs of sermons which have been EXCELLENT, not to mention timely. Great listening and it makes the day go somewhat quicker. Ok, so NOTHING could have made the last hour of today go quicker! It was just PAINFUL! Well, I am really about ready to crash so I think I'll sign off for tonight. We need to map out tomorrow so I have no idea yet if we'll have internet again or not. We sure appreciate all the prayers, esp as those big trucks go flying by and Rodney is dozing off in the rig! Sergei isn't helping keep him awake!