Pictures -- Northern Plains Gap: North Dakota & Montana
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This coal mine is one of the 10 largest in the US, operated by a subsidiary of North American Coal Corporation. For a half-hour I watched 200-ton overburden trucks zip back and forth from this seam to the energy plant a few miles away. It is hard to comprehend the size of these trucks and shovels.
The plains are a tough place to be when it is cold, because chances are that there is also a stiff wind. I had several days in a row between 30 and 40 degrees, but it felt more like 20 degrees because of the wind chill. I covered everything I could.
Brr, it's the morning of May 3rd and it's 15.8 degrees. My flask of Atlantic Ocean water was frozen over solid.
With the Kuklas, a family that I stayed with one night near Killdeer. The week before I arrived Casey, left, had to bring a cow to the vet for a C-section -- the calf weighed 155 pounds! (By comparison, a normal calf weighs about 100 pounds.)
A sod house that was inhabited by a homesteader from Eastern Europe.
It was uncommon for me to be passed by vehicles when I was on the backroads - over the course of a typical 12 hour day I might have been passed by about a dozen drivers. But when I did get passed, it was important to get on the correct side of the road, or I would be licking dust off my teeth.
The moon rises just as the sun sets.
An intimidating stretch of road near Belfield.