Dear Natalie,
We started the long drive home this morning, but not before swinging back into the national park for a quick stop at the visitors center. For a Junior Ranger badge, of course.
We spent the rest of the day driving, driving, driving. All the way across northern Montana on two-lane U.S. Highway 2.
We pulled into Medora, North Dakota, shortly after 9 p.m. I chose this town deliberately. It was from here that we launched our first trip out West in 2009. If this is truly our last Long family road trip, then things have come full-circle. I appreciate the symmetry.
As we approached Medora, Dad read the blog entry from nine years ago. There’s a long description of the smell that seemed to waft straight into our car from the North Dakota farmland — and we later realized that the odor was coming not from outside, but from a little box of crawfish parts that you had collected while we were in Minnesota.
That passage was especially poignant today — and it’s exactly why I’ve labored over this blog on every trip. Although I have vividly remembered my description of the electric green of the North Dakota grassland, Dad and I had completely forgotten about the funny smell — or its source. We’re so grateful that little moment has been documented, and will continue to make us laugh — and cry — for years to come.
Medora is a ghost town after dark. (Everyone, we found out, is at the Medora Musical Extravaganza Spectacular, which is staged every night at an outdoor amphitheater on the edge of town. We fumbled along the darkened streets until found our hotel, the newly built Elkhorn Quarters — 116 rooms of pre-fab construction that are furnished in the style of Authentic Great Wolf Lodge and have all the ambiance of an quonset hut army barracks.
We will continue to push home tomorrow.
We can’t wait to see you soon!
Love, Mom
xoxoxoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment