The Drive

So I woke up this morning at 1:30 AM to make the 9 1/2 hour trip to Tioga from Oakdale. After a very difficult goodbye, a quick stop at the gas station, and cursing at my GPS, I was on my way. The first 4 hours or so went by relatively quickly. I was about 45 minutes from Fargo when a massive storm hit. Hail, lightning, and torrential rain, it was so bad I almost parked under a bridge. It lasted about 30 minutes and then eased up. By that time, it was nearly 6 AM and still pitch black outside. I passed through Fargo and kept hauling ass trying to make up for lost time. The sky started to lighten up with the sunrise, and there was fog everywhere. I thought the daylight would help me wake up, but it sort of made me feel insane, so I snapped some pictures to help stay awake.

 The highway was straight as an arrow and the landscape was generally unimpressive.

Like I said, I was feeling crazy, with the radio blasting Golden Oldies. I had put my monkey hat on my passenger seat like this when I left town, and had forgotten about it. When daylight hit, I saw this out of the corner of my eye and almost had a heart attack.

Anyway, North Dakota has a large amount of a small variety of things to look at. I saw some hay...

....and some cows...

....and some trains....

...and lots of mills.....

....and some oil pumps....

...and some trucks....

.....yeah.

The weather was weird. I kept running into strange storm pockets. This picture doesn't do the sky much justice, it was putting on a pretty awesome show from time to time.

 More ROAD!! This is about 7.5 hours in.

Then I rolled up on this, which was very pretty! Too bad the landscape isn't like this all over. It's pretty flat, mostly.

Feeling sick to my stomach and delirious 10 hours into the drive, I finally see this....

...which made me do this.

 I called my Dad and told him I was outside his apartment. He came outside and made this face.

And (awww) he already had me all set up with a brand new bed and headboard with an oh-so-cute pink and white quilt. I'm all settled in now.

I took a shower and got dolled up, went to my interview at Power Fuels (which went great), came back to the apartment and proceeded to pass out. I haven't explored the area much yet, but I will. I have some homework to do right now but I will update again soon. I already miss everybody terribly, but I'm feeling good about the move and am excited for what's ahead.

Sending Love!

Lita