Tennessen Weil mile by mile: 2016 Yellowstone Road Trip: Day 1

Cities:

Fargo, ND

Jamestown, ND

Dickinson, ND

Miles: 516.8

States: MN and ND

Handicaps:

Belly Pan missing

Forgot to pack paper towels

Road Construction: Doesn't matter - there's no one on the roads.

Money from Grandmother spent by the kids: $0.25 each for two wooden nickels.

Memories:

Danny - Standing at the leg of the giant buffalo, seeing the weapons that Native Americans used for buffalos, listening to the Hobbit

Grace - Riding in the Stage Coach, looking through the binoculars so that it looked like I was behind the wheel

Therese - The domed ceiling of the Alien Cafe, seeing the white buffalo, being in a hotel without bullet-proof glass in front of the front desk.

Gordon - Seeing the skull of the extinct buffalo,

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After painstakingly tearing apart the house I located Grace's glasses which had been missing for over a week. It seemed that now nothing could stand in our way. I probably shouldn't have said that out loud because less than 24 hours after getting my car back from it's pre-road trip check-up, and 15 hours before our scheduled departure time, the plastic thingy underneath the car fell off. I now know this is called a "Belly-pan". Heroic efforts from our mechanic resulted in a replacement part but unfortunately, the piece which holds the belly pan in place was also damaged so the repair was postponed. I am assured that unless we encounter rain or snow or sleet or road salt, this can wait until we get back.

We probably came as close as we ever have to a 6:00 departure time. Which means we left at 8:30.

First observation about North Dakota: Flat land, big sky. Man is that sucker flat! Next observation, if the land is flat and nondescript, the roads are even more-so. We celebrated every curve as something to break up the monotony.

Our first stop came 3.5 hours in, right across the border in Fargo. No it was not a wood-chipper. It was the equally renowned "Space Aliens Cafe." The Ambiance was stellar. The food was pretty good and the service was similar to the road we came in on: bland and uneventful.

We were in for quite a change as we continued our drive through North Dakota. The winds had picked up and there was no danger of being hypnotized by the road when the driver was wrestling with the steering wheel to keep the car on course during intense gusts of wind.

We blew into Jamestown about an hour-and-a-half later. Jamestown is the home of the very special and sacred white buffalo and we were lucky to see "White Cloud" near the fence. The pastureland for the buffalo is quite vast and they are not always within viewing range. We also checked out the Buffalo Museum and the world's largest Buffalo Sculpture. (Little did we know that 50 miles later we would be passing, Sue, the worlds largest Holstein Cow Sculpture.)

Before we left we walked through the nearby Frontier Village. Danny still stands by his long hair but was a bit mortified when an older volunteer asked us if our little girl wanted to see the antique dolls.

We ended our stop with a very bumpy stagecoach ride. A nice six minute taste of what it must have been like to ride the stage to Chicago back in the day.

We kept ourselves occupied by reading the Hobbit during our final looooooong flat stretch of driving. I have to brag a bit: I found an app that turns my phone into a microphone. When plugged in to the car radio, I can read in a normal voice without twisting my neck to a 180 degree angle and my voice is broadcast on the car speakers. Pretty cool. At one point Danny even asked if we could pause the book on tape.

Three pieces of good news awaited us at our hotel in Dickenson, SD:

1) Unlike our halfway stop on last year's road trip, this hotel is clean and comfortable with no ketchup (how we hoped it was ketchup) splattered on the walls, and a free breakfast tomorrow that promises to be much better than the two-week old gummy muffins of 2014.

2) We realized we had passed into the Mountain time zone and therefore were in possession of a shiny new extra hour.

3) The terrain was starting to look hilly and a bit more interesting so tomorrow's drive should be a bit more enjoyable.