| Medora, North Dakota
The visitor center at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Unit, is larger than at the North Unit. There's more action, more people around. The railroad is here, and it still brings freight through Medora. It doesn't stop much, though, any more. However, I-94 does go by the edge of town and through the Badlands, following the railroad. That brings lots of people to Medora.
At the visitor center, we attended a ranger program at Roosevelt's Maltese Ranch cabin, and watched the park's video presentation. The rest of the morning was spent enjoying the visitor center exhibits and buying books.
After lunch in the camper, which was within walking distance of the visitor center, we set out to drive the park's thirty-six mile scenic road. I took photos of buffalo and prairie dogs, and of the fantastic polychrome erosion sculptures that make The Badlands. We read all the interpretive signage, took short walks, and toured the park campground.
It was late afternoon when we drove the quarter mile from the national park entrance to Medora. Everything is clustered here and a railroad runs through it. It is an oasis in endless miles of prairie grass and badlands.
Medora has crafted itself as a tourist town. All the buildings are either log or the dark-stained redwood clapboards of the West. Trees and flowers artfully support the setting. There is the usual complement of gift shops and restaurants. I think I counted five shops selling ice cream. Being true tourists at heart, we strolled the streets and shopped though several of the gift shops. There were few people in town this late in the season, but the hopeful shops stayed open until 8:30. In another week, after Labor Day, Medora folk will roll up their wooden sidewalks and hunker down for the long winter.
We had planned to eat dinner out, since this is our last day in the North Dakota Badlands. Bob looked into the couple of restaurants and chose a saloon and restaurant outfit. The restaurant was upstairs above the saloon, and all decked out in calico and lace. We chose into a table angled to the window. From it we watched the passing scene below and enjoyed some cowboy grub; a cool beer and a sizzling buffalo steak. U.S. Route 85, a red line on the maps, begins at the border of Saskatchewan and North Dakota, and finally disappears in the warren of Denver, Colorado. Today we followed it from Medora down through the rest of North Dakota and into South Dakota. Halfway through South Dakota, about at the Black Hills, 85 made a right curve into Wyoming.
The ride from Medora to Spearfish traveled through high prairie again, at elevations of 3,000 feet, give or take. The land still played its magic on us. Miles of golden wheat, now mostly golden stubble, alternated with even more miles of earth-tone rangeland. Small buttes interrupted the flatness. Lacy necklaces of cottonwood trees traced the course of lazy stream. Twice we passed ancient threshers, worn and rusted as brown as the prairie, exhibited on roadside hilltops. We saw antelope and lots of cattle, nearly all Angus.
A farmer working on his field miles from anywhere chugged along on his tractor rolling up straw into those monster round bales you see now. We pulled over to the side and watched intently the red box he was pulling, waiting for the big event. He stopped. I had my binoculars right on him. Nothing happened. We waited. Then slowly, to our great joy, the box raised up and out rolled a perfect huge round bale. He left it lying there and went on about his business. So did we.
At Spearfish, Wyoming, 85 jumps onto I-90. We didn't make the jump. We drove back and forth in Spearfish, trying to find where we went wrong. With a trailer following us, turning around again and again did not improve our spirits. We finally found a campground at the west edge of town where we could pull in and ask directions. It was ninety-four degrees outside. The campground had shade trees, free showers, and full hookups. We got our directions to I-90. Then we gave them money, pulled Little Moby around the campground office and under a shade tree. We were home - at 3:30 in the afternoon. The temperature only got down to sixty-five degrees last night. It was the first morning, including the morning when we started this trip, that we haven't had Little Tiger ceramic heater or the camper furnace on for an hour or so. I loved it.
We got onto I-90/Rt. 85, shook the dust of Spearfish from our heels, and headed west toward Sundance. We were only thirty miles south of Devil's Tower National Monument when we got out of Sundance, so we took a quick right to go see it.
The route climbed to 4,000 feet and into a world of rolling hills forested with ponderosa pine. The Belle Fource River and heavy snowfall keeps this area moister then the surrounding plains. A hilly, winding road carried us to Devil's Tower, which we could see against the sky twenty miles before we reached it.
The park visitor center was a small log building on the edge of a pine-covered slope, very picturesque. We perused the exhibits and looked over the bookstore. When we went out we saw that from the visitor center a rather steep asphalt path climbs to the base of the tower.
Bob decided to buy a book about Devil's Tower, so he went back into the bookstore just as a monster white bus pulled up and disgorged a stream of Japanese tourists. I crossed the parking lot and walked up the path to the tower.
When I got to the boulder field at the base of the tower, the path continued up into the boulders. Hot patootie! Here was a chance to go through the boulder field and get closer to the tower. I followed the path. It kept on going. I kept on going. From the north shaded side of the tower I came around to the south side where the tower walls stood out in bold relief painted by bright sunshine. I took pictures; shade wall pictures, sun wall pictures, and two pictures with my finger in them.
The tower-encircling path was protected from the sun by a tall ponderosa pine and juniper forest that is creeping onto the boulder fields and assaulting the tower. Aggressive juniper already grew from the vertical cracks in the tower walls.
I kept on walking. There were interpretive signs to read along the way and benches to rest on. Sun through the pines dappled the path. Always the boulder field and soaring tower walls were on my left, a gray bastion of strength.
The tower has been sacred to many Indian nations for centuries. I suspect that more than one earth-centered religious sect has also succumbed to its mysticism. June is especially important in Indian ritual, and climbers are asked to stay off the tower during that month. A couple of trees near the tower are festooned with pieces of cloth and bead strings, prayer rags and bundles left by supplicants, adding another floss of mysticism to the sanctity of the rock tower.
When I got back around the monument, I then found the sign at the foot of the path mapping the trail around the tower and putting it at 1.3 miles. I thought it was longer. Whatever, it was a great experience.
In Newcastle we found a Pizza Hut with a full parking lot, no chance of squeezing Moby into there. A ways farther down was a Subway. Across the street from the Subway was a strip mall with a big parking lot. Bingo. Subway it was.
When we went into the Subway, only one table was taken. There were four people ahead of Bob in line. Another fellow came in and lined up behind Bob. I walked over to a small table for two, sat down, and waited for Bob to bring me my six-inch veggie sub. Our timing was exquisite. We weren't there two minutes when the big white bus pulled up and forty-leven Japanese tourists poured into the small restaurant. They were lined up out the door.
Hard on their heels came a gaggle of pushing and giggling high school students who had pre-ordered sandwiches. They crowded the cash register and drink dispensers, and completely choked off the sandwich assembly line by chatting over and then finally purchasing chips and cookies. The Japanese waited impassively, as did the two remaining people in front of Bob. Only the fellow behind Bob had an expression of annoyance. He, and I. The kids were being exceptionally rude, noisy, and silly in the already crowded restaurant. Several people opened the restaurant door, took one look at the mass of humanity, and went elsewhere. I held on to my table through the melée. The kids finally left the restaurant, since all the tables were taken by Japanese who, like me, were waiting for their food from folks in line. We all ate our sandwiches in relative peace and quiet.
All afternoon we traveled through wonderfully barren rangeland. It was a perfect prairie day. Dabs of whipped cream clouds floated in an endless blue sky. Bright yellow black-eyed susans nodded their heads in the wind alongside the road.
There were working windmills to see today, and a whirling dust devil danced for us. Occasional far-flung ranches or farmsteads graced a hilltop or were tucked in a valley far off the road. More often, just a mailbox and a dirt road going off over the hills told of remote settlers.
Abandoned barns or greyed clapboard houses are widely scattered on the prairie, as they are all over range and farm country. They fascinate Bob. He tries to imagine the stories those teetering walls could tell of the work, hopes, and lives of the early settlers.
One empty and leaning house, close to the road, caught his eye today. He pulled onto the shoulder and I got out and photographed it for him. I took several shots from different views. I composed one view where the house was framed by two lone pine trees. Maybe it will be good enough to frame.
We drive through this country. We see it from the road, and the view surrounds us in the car. We are immersed in what we see. But when I stepped out of the car, and actually walked through the crackly dry grasses, felt the expanses of rolling prairie around me, smelled the breeze and touched the trees, the land came to life and took me in. U. S. Route 20 rolls from the west to the east boundary of Nebraska, arrow-straight and flat. Like many of the roads we have traveled this summer, we can travel an hour or more without seeing another car.
We have the flawless blue sky-bowl over us, and the grasslands wrapped around us, with, today, another feature. Mariah brought her sisters. Winds of at least thirty miles per hour from the south slapped Little Moby to and fro. It was a major effort to force the car and camper doors open when we stopped for lunch in the scenic parking lot of an Alcor store at Valentine, Nebraska. Little Moby rocked like a baby's cradle during our quick tuna, cheese, and apple lunch. Out in the veldt Bob gripped the wheel, chewed gum furiously, and pushed the weaving and swaying rig across Nebraska.
Large herds of cattle watched us incuriously, and round bales of hay squatting on the stubble ignored us as we passed them. We went by fields of sunflowers this morning, all their faces dutifully turned to the eastern sun. That was before Mariah hit her stride. After that, fields of corn and the slender prairie grasses bobbed and bowed to the icy North as the south wind whipped through them. The family farm draws the landscape in Nebraska. Corn, soybeans, sunflowers, and grains carpet the slightly rolling land. We even passed three golf courses! I don't know who plays on them out there in nowhere.
Small villages dot Route 20, many of them having only thirteen, or forty-seven souls living in them, according to the sign at the edge of each settlement. They service larger rural areas, though, and often have a church, post office, gas station or school. We made a game of guessing the population of a village as we came towards it.
Bob decided he wanted a cup of coffee, so he pulled off Route 20 into the gravel lot of a small light blue pole barn-type building with “Café” painted in faded block letters on the wall. I knew full well what he was up to. He knew that small roadside cafés often featured home baked goodies. Farm-wife goodies are especially good. I busied myself with doing some organizing in the car and camper while he was in the restaurant. He seemed to take a long time.
Sure enough, when he surfaced, he had his cup of coffee and a big homemade cinnamon roll. Everyone in the café, the few customers and owner, had said “hello” when Bob walked in. Bob is never at a loss for words, so he said he just made himself at home and chewed the fat with the locals for a while. He had a good time. “And,” he added, “there was no set charge for the coffee and roll, just a cup for donations.”
There are no, I repeat, no campgrounds, rest areas, or even pull-off on Route 20 from Atkinson, Nebraska, going east, until you're past Sioux City and well into Iowa. We knew that from past trips. It was too early to stop for the night when we went through Atkinson, so we pushed on to Sioux City and dragged ourselves into a motel last night. We had covered almost 400 miles in hot, windy, dusty weather, and we felt it.
Across the highway from the motel was a Mongolian Grill restaurant, where we went for supper. It was a “create your own stir-fry” kind of place, which enlivened us. Any time you stand Bob in front of a food buffet, his outlook on life improves considerably. While we leaned over the pit watching the cooks deftly flip around vegetables and noodles on the immense circular grill, we turned to each other and said in unison, “This is fun.”
At 5:50 this morning the clock radio went off in our room for reasons of its own. I fumbled and fumbled in the dark trying to shut if off. I had to turn on the light, which didn't thrill Bob. Without his hearing aids, the radio didn't waken him. The light took care of that. Finally I found the volume control and turned it all the way down. We went back to sleep.
At 7 a.m. the cell phone rang. It was our daughter wondering where in the country we were going to be today, and hoped we weren't heading into Florida. Hurricane Francis is tracking to hit Florida tonight or tomorrow. We're well out of her way here in Iowa, but there is a level of stress in wondering whether we'll have a home or not when we do get back.
The drive today was relatively short, just from Sioux City to a campground near Des Moines, fewer than 200 miles. Knowing this, we made a leisurely morning at the motel. The complimentary continental breakfast had another little epicurean treat, a self-cook waffle iron. I poured pre-measured batter from a foam cup into the iron, flipped it over, and waited two minutes. Voilá! The iron presented me with a golden brown, fluffy, perfect waffle.
We traveled again through rolling fields and prosperous-looking farmsteads. The corn must be eight feet high, maybe more. It's all tasseled out in burnished bronze and the stalks are turning golden as they dry out for fall harvest. The high was eighty-five degrees, and it is still very dry. Trucks on gravel roads near the highway kick up huge clouds of dust to drift across our path. Yellow-blossomed golden rod and slender asters fill the setback from the road shoulder to the fields, tall, gangly plants waving in the breeze. Cattails shoot up out of the ditches with their summer's long seed pods still brown and firm. Fall's long fingers haven't touched the cattails or the trees in Iowa yet. Summer lingers. The landscape in southern Iowa and through northern Missouri was cloaked in a humid haze today. The azure of the sky was very pale, hidden by an almost transparent layer of cloud cover. The filtered sun was bright and hot. Ninety-five degree heat shimmered off cornfields and pavement.
South of Des Moines, old friends appeared along the roadside. Tall stalks of goldenrod, purple-flowered chicory, milkweed, and even staghorn sumac with its berry clusters already brown graced the cutbacks and fallow fields. There were patches of Queen Anne's lace, too, and wild asters. Small farm fields, wild meadows and small woodlands spread over rolling hills. Creeks, rivers, and ponds added water interest to the pastoral countryside.
Then, rather suddenly, we were in the Ozarks. No more fields of any kind, rather, fluffy tree-covered round mountains in a thousand shades of green closed in on the road. Branson, the town of country music fame, is tucked into the Ozarks. It sprawls over the hills, and its streets go up and down like roller coasters.
We had fixed on Branson as a place to get off the road for the Labor Day Holiday weekend, and had made campground reservations well ahead of our arrival. It was early evening when we dragged Little Moby into the campground after ten hours on the road. By the time we got Little Moby settled and went off in BlueVan to find dinner, it was fully dark. We drove around a lot more than we wanted to before we finally found a restaurant, the Jim Owens Steak House. Not knowing much about country music, we had, and still have, no idea who Jim Owens is. But he serves a good meal, and our waiter was friendly and funny. It was a fine way to end a long day. Hurricane Charlie hit Florida while we were in Alaska. Our Central Florida home was spared. Now Frances, a wide, sweeping hurricane, is poised this morning to move on shore at Fort Pierce, south of us, and go over our house. I watched the storm's progress on my computer and on the TV in the campground office for a while this morning. Worrying won't change the course of the hurricane, though, so we occupied ourselves by going out and about in Branson.
First we drove around town to familiarize ourselves with what was where. We spent the next few hours at the Branson Meadows Outlet Mall. It gave us a chance to do some walking, and we did some shopping, too.
We walked around the area of Shepherd of the Hills, where the theater is, for a while. It was lovely and peaceful on the mountainside. Then we went back to the camper to check on the weather and worry. Frances still pours rain onto Florida. Flooding and spin-off tornadoes follow her slow progress northward. Frances' winds have slow to sixty-five miles per hour, and she has been downgraded to a tropical storm. She is now over water south of the Florida Panhandle gathering strength for her next landfall.
Frances is effectively keeping us from heading south. So we renewed our campsite for another day and drove into town to the Tanger Outlet Mall. Again we got some walking in, which felt good. Bob found some treasures while shopping. I didn't find anything. Though we thought Branson would be busy during the Labor Day holiday, not so. Many of the theaters were closed, apparently making the transition from summer to winter offerings. We didn't see any tour buses, and traffic was sparse.
After the mall, we went back to the camper for a quick supper and brush-up, and then we were off for the opulent theater of the Soji Tabushi show. It was an evening of superlatives from the posh Victorian Ladies Room to the performance's finale in a blaze of on-stage fireworks. We came out with our eyes spinning. Bob called our neighbor, Hank, first thing this morning to check on our house. The first relief was that Hank answered the phone, which meant his house was still there. He said he had walked around our house and didn't see any serious damage, as far as he could tell in the still-torrential rains. He could see that there were a lot of trees down around us, and some flooding. That lowered our stress level considerably. At least we still had a house. There was some question about our having trees any more.
A fellow sitting next to me at the Soji show last night told me about Silver Dollar City, an attraction west of town. It sounded like something we'd like to do. We put on our walking shoes, filled a couple of water bottles, tossed the sun screen into the backpack, and drove out Rt. 76 West to Silver Dollar City.
When we got up there, a large sign stopped us short. Silver Dollar City was closed for two days to get ready for the fall season. We were really, really disappointed, and at a loss for a way to spend the day. Sitting in the campground trying to read and stewing about Frances, and now Ivan, another hurricane gathering itself in the western Caribbean, was not an option. We needed to be amused.
We went, therefore, to the third Branson outlet mall, the Factory Merchants Mall. We got there shortly after it opened, and stayed well into the noon hour. I found a couple of Christmas gifts, which was good. After leisurely grazing a Ruby Tuesday salad bar for lunch, we shopped a couple of local stores, got groceries, and arrived back home about four in the afternoon.
There was a distinct smell of tar in the country air when we drove into the campground. Trucks and heavy equipment were crashing and rumbling around. They were resurfacing the campground roads with tar and gravel. How delightful! So much for sitting outside and enjoying the seventy-eight degree weather. I took my computer and went over to the office to check on Frances. She is in Georgia, still as a tropical storm, and seems to have chosen a northeasterly route. Ivan's projected track up the Gulf of Mexico will put landfall anywhere from Galveston to Tallahassee, right in our path again. Nothing to do but wait. We both woke up before six in the morning, even though it was hardly light outside. That started the day out on the left foot. We had no intention of getting up that early on what promised to be another long day in Branson. Our microwave died about a week ago, so I had to cook our oatmeal on the stovetop. Just another annoyance. I use a combination of milk and water to prepare the oatmeal, which I think gives it more flavor than just water. So I poured a generous amount of milk into the oatmeal pan, set the bottle on the table, and cooked up breakfast.
When I sat down to eat, I poured some more milk over my oatmeal and blueberries, and began to stir it in. Whew! I stuck my nose in the bowl. Sour milk. Bob took a sniff from the bottle and confirmed it. He poured it out. Then we dumped more brown sugar flavored sweetener on the oatmeal to hide the taste, and ate it anyway.
Bob was at the sink in his undershorts and a t-shirt washing out the oatmeal pan when a roar ripped through the camper. It was only 7:30 a.m. and the tar and gravel machinery sprang into life. Worse, a tractor-like monster appeared and began scouring our own street with a huge wire brush preparatory to gooping it up with tar.
We shouted orders to each other, ran into each other, threw dishes into cupboards and clothes on our bodies. In fewer than fifteen minutes we were out of the campsite with Little Moby and parked near the campground office.
When the campground office opened at 8:00 a.m., we were at the door. The gal behind the office desk had control of the TV remote. She clicked on the weather channel and we all sat down to watch it.
After messing around with Atlanta, Frances was presently tossing tornadoes around in South Carolina. Florida was starting to come out of the rain from Frances. Ivan, if it became a threat, might not get into the northern Gulf of Mexico until Monday, four more days. That news was a green light to get out of Branson before we died there of old age.
Branson is peculiarly located for a major tourist attraction. It's a far piece from any interstate highway, and from any direction except north, you have to go through many mountainous miles to get in or out of town. It took us almost eight hours to drive the winding 260 miles on a two-lane Federal highway from Branson east to I-55. That included lunch, getting lost twice going through poorly marked road construction, and creeping behind a truck painting yellow lines on the road.
Once we got on I-55, we said goodbye to the red-line roads. We can't dawdle and sightsee now. Speed and time rule our way. We spent last night in a campground somewhere along I-55. We got in late, took down the table, made the bed, and fell into it.
Before we left this morning, I hauled the laptop to a bench and shelf by the showers to plug into the world. The bench arrangement was in a nook under roof, even though it was outside. Its seclusion made it rather dark, which was great for me as I struggled to see the display on my fading computer screen. I've called all the tech people I know, namely Joe Pipala, home in Florida. Apparently the computer is dying. There's nothing I can do but hope it holds out until I get home. Score another ten points up on the stress index. Mosquitoes liked the secluded corner, too. I didn't linger.
Ivan has pummeled Grenada, and is making its inexorable way to Jamaica and Cuba. Landfall is expected in Jamaica Friday, tomorrow. Florida and the Gulf of Mexico are still on the trajectory. Of course, Ivan could take a left turn and miss us, but we can't count on that. We wait.
So we went ahead with Plan A. Jackson, Mississippi was straight south another 300-plus miles from where we spent last night. Interstates fan out of Jackson to a range of compass points. If Ivan comes calling, we can run out of there in almost any direction on fast roads.
I knew I was back in the Deep South when I stepped out of the van at a rest stop in northern Mississippi into the shade of a magnolia tree. Bob didn't notice the magnolia particularly. But he remarked, as we strolled toward the restroom, that it just “felt like” Florida, like home.
I checked the progress of Ivan around 7:30 p.m. on my computer here in the campground in Jackson, Mississippi. The projected track continues over Florida, now showing the epicenter just west of Orlando at 8:00 a.m. Tuesday. We were lucky to get a campsite. The campground was full of evacuees from both Florida and Georgia.
There was a letter in my email tonight from our Tallahassee friends, the Sheltons, suggesting that we come to their place to wait and see what Ivan does. Since the present projections indicate that Ivan will not get into northern Florida until late Tuesday or even Wednesday, we would have plenty of time to leave Tallahassee if, in fact, the hurricane does come up the coast.
The campground we are in has no public TV to see the weather on. The place could use some tender loving care. It is dumpy. The idea of spending five or six days here in ninety-plus degree heat was daunting, if not downright depressing. We decided to go to Tallahassee. The golden-pink sun of early morning cast a soft blush on the tall southern pines lining the highway when we turned onto I-55 South at 7:15 this morning. Around 9:30 a.m. we stopped at a Louisiana Welcome Center. One of the gals behind the desk said the Florida Keys are being evacuated. Maybe we should have stayed in Jackson.
Skies were blue and the temperature got to a good Southern ninety-four degrees as we rolled across Lousiana, Missisippi again, Alabama, and into the Florida Panhandle on I-10, a highway we've traveled a lot in our comings and goings. Great estuary marshes spread north and south from the highway in eastern Mississippi. We passed over swamps and bayous where trees drooped with gray Spanish moss. Lunch was cold cuts and cookies in the van as we drove along.
We crossed the Florida line, and stopped at a Welcome Center in blazing sunshine. The hurricane information was essentially the same as last night. Hanging just east of the Welcome Center was another welcome, gray skies and rains of a typical Florida afternoon thunder shower. We crossed the long Pensacola Bay Bridge in light rain, and the rain followed us to Tallahassee.
For the first fifty or sixty miles into Florida, temporary electric signs sitting along the roadside every ten miles or so flashed the numbers of AM stations from which to get evacuation instructions. We tried them, but they weren't on the air today.
It was 7:30 p.m. when we bounced up Old Dirt Road and into the yard of our friends' house. They had drinks and cheese waiting, and soon dinner was on the table. The opening kickoff of the football game between Florida State and Miami was at 8:00 p.m., for the evening's entertainment. It sure beat that campground in Jackson, Mississippi! These three days, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, have been sunny and hot, great Florida weather. We went on a picnic, took walks, visited, read, and watched TV in a hedonistic binge of pure relaxation. The computer could die; I didn't care. We had TV and radio now to track the storm. Tallahassee, being the state capitol of Florida, is also the hub of many highways. We can easily leave if we have to.
The only black cloud, literally, on all this joie de vivre, is Ivan the Terrible. We all watch the storm forecast, day by day, every few hours. Right now it's got Tallahassee in its cross hairs and our home, four hours south, in its sweep. Much could change. We wait. I am writing this on a notepad as we travel along Route 10 heading east, hopefully going away from Ivan. The hurricane's path shifted west enough that we feel safe about going home to central Florida. Projected landfall now is the western Florida Panhandle, Alabama or Mississippi. All three areas are closely clustered along the Gulf of Mexico.
It was misty and gray when we left Tallahassee this morning. People were boarding up their windows. Schools in Tallahassee are closed, and mandatory evacuations are ordered in the Panhandle just west of Tallahassee. Like a caravan, continual strings of five or six utility trucks with cherry pickers on their backs stream west past us on I-10. Some of them also have huge corkscrew-like posthole diggers. They're going to what hasn't happened yet, the landfall of Ivan.
But the farther east we have come, the better the weather. It is dry now, and cloudy-bright. We called a neighbor before we left Tallahassee, to see what central Florida people were being told. He said that all roads were open, to come on home. He also said that an oak tree loosened during Frances was leaning toward our house quite a bit.
When we turned south on Rt. 19, the sun came out! We are speeding home to deal with that tree in case we get corollary winds as Ivan goes by in the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow.
Later
We drove into our driveway in early afternoon, home after over 14,000 miles and many adventures. Home isn't quite as we left it. Weeds flourish in the flower beds. Not one, but four trees are leaning. But just the one threatens the house. There's nothing we can do right now. A little pile of our house trim and some shingles lies on the front walk, collected by our neighbor. The tops have been ripped off many trees in the wooded area behind the house. Piles of brush line the curbs from people cleaning debris off their lots. But we are all lucky. Although many homes lost most of their shingles, only one house in our residential park was seriously damaged by Frances.
We walked into our house. It smelled like home. It was home. Ivan slammed into the Gulf Coast at Pensacola, and flattened the area. The bridges on I-10 were damaged beyond use. It will take years for Pensacola to recover and rebuild from the disaster.
We were home fewer than two weeks, when Jeanne came by and followed the track of Frances. We evacuated to Dothan, Alabama. Our trees that had been staked up from Frances were knocked over again by Jeanne. There was more damage to roofs and trees. But homes still stood afterwards in our area. South and east of us there was a lot more devastation. We were lucky, again. |
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TOUR GUIDE
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| Page 1
Getting Started Michigan Canada |
Page 6
Alaska |
| Page 2
International Falls, MN North Dakota Malta, MT Alberta, Canada |
Page 7
Alaska |
| Page 3
British Columbia, Canada Yukon Territory, Canada |
Page 8
Alaska Yukon Territory, Canada |
| Page 4
Alaska Yukon Territory, Canada Alaska |
Page 9
Yukon Territory, Canada British Columbia, Canada Alberta, Canada Havre, Montana North Dakota |
| Page 5
Valdez, Alaska |
Page 10
Medora, North Dakota Wyoming Rt. 20 across Nebraska Des Moines, Iowa Branson, Missouri Jackson, Mississippi Tallahassee, Florida Home! |
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