Wide open space, big endless sky and beautiful land

Today was a day of wide open spaces, huge sky (it looks bigger which is something I always heard people say about this part of the country) and land that is just breathtakingly beautiful. We saw real cowboys on horseback, riding through the fields and we even stopped at a Cowboy Historic Town, which made me think a lot of my dear brother-in-law, Flavio. No pics of the cowboys girls, sorry. (I was driving...)


We drove 350 miles through North Dakota and another hundred and something through Montana. ND is beautiful, the road is wide and you can see miles ahead.


The cargo trains are amazingly long and move very very slowly, I have a video of one of them because it would be impossible to show it through still picture.

There are sunflower fields, one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen and it reminded me of a colleague from work back in NJ, who planted sunflowers in her garden with her son.



Here is another funny picture to show how things are from a different dimension here. See our car and trailer compared to our neighbor in the parking lot, hehehe.



We came across Theodore Roosevelt National Park in ND and saw a very beautiful Canyon formation named "Painted Canyon". It was a very nice surprise. We stopped at the Scenic View rest stop and took a few pictures. The Greys enjoyed the break and, as usual, they cause a commotion wherever we stop. :-)



Are we there yet? No, baby, two more nights and three more days.

Road Work Ahead

I am convinced that the United States is just a huge highway that is always under construction. Since we left Nj, and even in NJ, the number of miles of roads under construction is enormous. Today it was in Minesota.
I was sad to leave Wisconsin, it was a very nice state. Nice and wide roads, friendly people and delicious cheese. That is us, leaving the hotel in the weee hours of the morning:

Today we were back to messy roads and crazy drivers, and funny trucks too. Have you ever seen an inclined truck trailer, well here is one:
.
Not much happened today, just a long and boring drive. So I will close with another shot of dear Shooter in his "Are we there yet?" pose:

North Dakota

About a month ago, somebody suggested to someone else the theory that maybe nobody lived in 'North Dakota'. This resulted in the someone else looking for license plates from North Dakota, during my recent drive from NJ to the Niagara Falls. No luck, or theory not proven incorrect: no license plates from North Dakota, despite seeing plates from just about anywhere else.

Finally, a month later, the theory has been proven wrong. ND (North Dakota) does exist, and there are persons living there. The below 6 pictures as proof of cars with ND license plates.

I have to say that it took us a long time before we saw even one. The first one was observed only 75 miles before entering the state. And even after entering the state, the majority of the license plates were still not from ND (most of them from Minnesota).

We will stay the night in Fargo, ND (in honor of the movie). Tomorrow, we will cross the state, and it already feels like we will be crossing the end of the world. If we don't make contact with the world tomorrow, we will have been sucked up by this vast nothingness of ND. I hope we survive, and I hope Montana will bring even more excitement.

The trip so far

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=15+Cleveland+Terrace,+West+Orange,+NJ+07052&daddr=Youngstown,+OH+to:de+forest,+wi+to:fargo,+nd+to:miles+city,+mt&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=43.83693,-85.52352&sspn=23.504567,44.296875&ie=UTF8&ll=43.834527,-85.957031&spn=23.504567,44.296875&z=5

This includes tomorrow, already planned because there aren't many options in MT to stay the night with 2 dogs.

Cleaning the pallet

As I am in the car for many hours every day, limited to the car, Alexandra, the dogs and our surroundings, I feel the process of 'cleaning the pallet' taking place.


As I am leaving NJ, where I spent 12 years of my life, I appreciate this period of living in vacuum, 'in between': not in NJ and not in the new place either'. It allows me to reflect, and give the past proper closure.


I usually try to 'process' history by extracting the important things and forgetting all little details. Easier said than done, because I frequently find myself remembering some stupid details and forgetting the 'big picture', especially when I get angry or emotional. I hope and feel that these 7 days will be very useful for me, giving me time to settle NJ before jumping into CA and allowing me to face CA without unnecessary judgements from prior NJ experiences. Kind of like closing the door before opening another one.



Obviously, the greyhounds deal with it differently and probably more intelligently: they just lounge in the back of the car, and reflect on their own state of mind, as you can see in the attached picture. A brain hard at work...

Things to do in every state

As we started out our journey, we gradually made a list of things that needed to be done in every state where we drove through; sort of a checklist of what needed to be done (you could say: stuff that needs to be done to conquer the state).

Well, that was quite easy when there were not too many states to do in one day, but today, visiting 4 states in one day, was quite an achievement.

Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin all were conquered.
We are tired, and tomorrow is another day, probably with only one state to conquer.

I wonder what checklist the Lady and Shooter have for each state: number one and number two perhaps?

Are we there yet?

The day started way too early for any human being to be civil:
The Beauty and the Beast, where Lady is obviously the beauty....

For those who have watched Shrek 2, you will see how this picture is the inspiration for the title:

Today went by without a hitch (no pun intended), thank the Lord. Apart from a little bit of rain that we got from the remnants of Gustav, the trip was quite uneventful and borderline boring. CORN CORN CORN and GIGANTIC TRUCKS is also we saw:

Have you ever seen these triple trailers??? They are huge!

We drove approximately 550 miles and crossed 4 states: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin (we changed the route, surprise!!!). Ohio was very smooth because they have nice and dog-friendly stops b(with Starbucks!!!!!!). Illinois was horrible. They drive like maniacs and the highway is under construction and it sucks. Of course, I was the one driving that section, so I ..itched the whole time :-). My husband is a Saint.

Now look at this funny guy here, it looks like it is coming towards us, doesn't it?

It got us worried for a moment... Hehehe, it was being towed by another f..ing huge truck!!! Chef, your smart car cannot survive on these roads, it will be truck food!



The dogs behaved exceptionally well again today and Lady did not even mind the rain. Shooter would do the occasional "Are we there yet?" check and go back to sleep, quite comfortably I might say. Check Jos's posting for further detail


We just enjoyed a supper of local cheese, crackers and wine and tonight we will sleep in De Forest, Wisconsin, "America's Dairyland". Tomorrow, it all starts again, at the unGodly hour of 6am and we'll see how far we can get. Tune in for more adventure and fun!