Our Vacation: Driving

I had been looking forward to driving across western North Dakota and eastern Montana on vacation, and it didn’t disappoint.  Although I am getting fonder of Northern Minnesota’s lush trees all the time, there is nothing like nearly 180 degrees of sky to just clear out a person’s brain.  It kind of makes me feel like I have detoxified.  Ahhhhh!  I love seeing all the beautiful cloud shapes and the colors of the sky.  Here in Minnesota we only get to see a little patch of blue or grey unless we go down to Lake Superior and then we can only look east.  I love looking west and watching thundershowers approach, and seeing the clouds stacked up high like super giant mountains.  The sunsets and the couple of sunrises I got to see were wonderful too.

Because I love driving with a good sky on roads that have hardly any traffic, I got to drive most of the way from Bismarck to Billings and back from Billings to nearly Bismarck, including a jaunt north of Killdeer north of Dickinson to drop off YaYa at horse camp with Grandma Kathy and Auntie Dot.  I pretty much appreciated the whole drive.  I love the wide open land and there was even a thunderstorm to watch on our way back through North Dakota in the middle of the night.  I was happy to take over the car, and then give it back to Dr. Peds to drive through the mountains (which he liked a lot better than the wide open stretch of western land . . . he said the mountain roads were exciting.  I was clenching on to the door handle with white knuckles all through Beartooth Pass).

And after all that wonderful sky, and the amazing drier landscape with all of it’s juts and dips and rolls,  I was ready to come back to my lush green, thick forest and cool Lake Superior weather.  It worked out beautifully.