Some Images from our trip as I catch up

Here are some different images as I catch up after we traveled from Bismark to Camp Birchwood on Friday, spent Saturday at camp and then left this morning (Sunday) driving across North Dakota to Williston, North Dakota--a 21st Century oil and gas boomtown.


     

Sign in lobby at out hotel in Bismarck, they wouldn't let Leslie and I in
with our cocktails.  Pffffft, we're on a ROAD trip assess that!

Something you don't see in a California mall, carpeting!
The entire mall is carpeted.  Oh and rider mowers and tractors on display....

Also in the mall in Bismark--a party pontoon boat!
When I took the picture an elderly gentleman was sitting at a table next
to the boat quizzically looking at me as I snapped my photo.
"I want her to see what it looks like so she puts the right on in my stocking."
"Good idea," he said.

Paul Bunyan and Babe, his obviously Blue Ox at Bemidji, Minnesota

This is Williston, North Dakota as seen from our hotel room.
By next year I'm betting this sitehas another hotel or some restaurants on it.
(A new Fudruckers being built made the front page of the Sunday paper today)

Help Wanted

We are in Minot, North Dakota and looking at the activity there is no doubt it has an unemployment rate of 2.2%.  High employment and commercial activity was evident as soon as we entered the outskirts of Williston, North Dakota which is about twenty miles from the Montana border.

Oil and gas have fueled tremendous job growth in this state and workers are flocking here from all over the country.  Workers that is who want to work, and are willing to separate themselves for a steady paycheck.  I met a man in the elevator of our hotel who is from Mississippi.  He appeared to be in his late 50's and told me he had been here for a few weeks and is working on seismic drilling north of town.  Most importantly to him, "I have a guaranteed job for the next six months and then will most likely be able to hook up with something else."

Like workers in other eras during economic downturns, those coming to North Dakota are leaving families behind so they can earn a good income to send back to those families.  Rather than waiting for their 99 weeks to run out, these men, and women, aren't worried about the North Dakota winter cold or summer heat.  What they are worried about is feeding and housing their families.

The hotels here are filled with pick up trucks from out of state--we have seen license plates from Oklahoma, Minnesota, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Idaho and many other states.  The car dealer lots are filled with pick up trucks--the local Lincoln dealer's lot is filled with Ford pick ups overflowing from the Ford dealer down the street.  There are no "Sale--50% Off!" signs in the furniture store windows, instead the marquee out front is advertising for help, as it just about every other business in town.

Driving across the state on highway 2 we saw impromptu towns of mobile homes and trailers that have been put on huge lots for housing workers---one such "town" had about a hundred such trailers that looked like barracks lined up and a huge central hall that looked like a World War II airplane hanger with a large "Lodge" sign on it signifying it is the central gathering place.

I imagine this is what the boom towns in Oklahoma in the early 20th century, or California or Alaska in the 19th century looked like when oil and gold were discovered.  North Dakota is filled with boom towns, with plenty of jobs attracting men and women wanting to work.  Be it in the oil or gas fields or in industries supporting those jobs, or in building the infrastructure we have seen going up in towns across the state--hotels, restaurants, manufactured homes, roads.  Jobs, jobs, jobs are in this state unlike any other.

The boom in jobs in the gas and oil fields has more than trickled across the economy: restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, furniture stores, car dealers, apartment landlords, department stores, shoe stores, hotels all are benefiting from the flow of paychecks. Next time you hear a politician say that public spending is needed to spur on economic development know they know little of how our economy works.  Minot, Williston and hundreds of other towns are seeing great economic activity not because of government programs, welfare checks, unemployment checks or social security disability checks.  They are growing because of private enterprise providing jobs that are paying into the government not taking out of it.

Why?  Because the state has aggressively pursued the extraction of oil and gas from it lands for the past several years, fighting the federal government on many occasions and finally being able to open up rich fields for extraction.  Seeing the robust activity and economic activity throughout the site I can only wonder, what if the elected officials and bureaucrats of California had been as active in pursuing the extraction of hydrocarbons from its land instead of actively blocking the drilling and extraction of oil and natural gas?

Final leg of the first half of our trip tomorrow, we should arrive at Camp Birchwood sometime just before or after the dinner bell rings.  Can't wait to see the girls!

Sign on the door of our hotel in Minot that is filled with out of state workers

Rest Stop

While the most people were caught up in the plunge of the stock markets yesterday Leslie and I were in financial-chaos-oblivion as we headed to our Part I destination on Day Three of our Great American Road Trip. While I was getting text messages from a service I subscribe to informing me that mortgage rates were doing well (blatant advertising, for more mortgage news check in frequently at www.DennisCSmith.com/myblog If you wish to help subsidize this trip and live in California call me to assist you with the purchase of your next home or to refinance your current mortgage---end advertising), it wasn't until a reporter for the Orange County Register emailed me to get my reaction to the Dow Jones crashing over 500 points that I was aware of the sell off. Being transported through our nation's Corn Belt with a beautiful driving companion, multiple CDs and satellite radio enables the cocoon effect from the outside news that we, or I, usually spend so much of my day following and comment upon.

Back to the trip. Before going to sleep Wednesday night we plotted our course for Camp Birchwood, destination for Part I of the trip. Deciding that going to Omaha would add too many miles we cut northeast about 90 miles east of our starting point of Gothenberg and then north towards Fargo, North Dakota. Once in Fargo we would cross into Minnesota and begin to work our way into the deep woods and farmland of the state. This route would take us off major interstates for much of the journey and on two lane state routes through small towns and farmland. Pretty much what I like to see on a trip.

Ever since we left California all the roads, especially the interstates, have been in great shape. Most of the roads are in much better shape than almost any of highways and byways of the Golden State and considering the states we have gone through, Nevada, Utah, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and that each has baking sun, freezing rain, snow, sleet, hail, to contend with one needs ponder why it is these states have such better road maintenance than California, well one does if one is a resident and tax payer of California like I am. Not to dwell or ponder this for long but consider where our state budget goes and who it supports next time you realign your Honda Pilot on your way to work.

Our progress on this road trip has been delayed somewhat by construction projects on every highway we have been on since leaving Nevada. One aspect of the freezing rain and snow is that the window for road maintenance is rather small, pretty much April to October.

Back to the trip. Driving through the rolling hills of Nebraska--yes hills and plenty of them--we were surrounded by miles and miles of corn interspersed with rotated crops of alfalfa. Stands of trees, silos, barns and homesteads dotted the landscape surrounded by the lush green with yellow tops of corn. The small towns we passed through were spotlessly clean, and many laying claim to their local heros or legends. For Nebraska we passed through Johnny Carson's hometown of Norfolk, Nebraska, other towns would have signs stating Home of .... and I would recognize the name of a University of Nebraska Cornhusker. I gave a little spit and a curse when we were told we were on the Tom Osborne Highway (for those who do not know Osborne was coach of the Huskers for many years and made a good habit of beating the much beloved, very respected and thoruoughly supported Sooners of the University of Oklahoma).

Reaching South Dakota we made a stop in Yankton (home of Tom Brokaw) and saw some guys getting their Harleys ready. I asked them if they were headed west and they assured me they were. West being Sturgess, gathering point for thousands and thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts (let's face it many are not "bikers" but business men and women with a hobby) for a week. A week that starts on Friday August 5th one of our Yankton bikers thought (they looked like bikers not insurance salesmen).

"Leslie we might want to check on our stop at Mount Rushmore, the Sturgess Rally is going on."

"Where is Sturgess?"

"Somewhere west of here."

Sturgess is in western South Dakota, above Rapid City, which is just above Mount Rushmore. If outdoor retailers could sell out hotels in Salt Lake City I was thinking thousands of bikers could sell our Rapid City, South Dakota. Leslie fired up my laptop and started working the phone and the AAA website before securing a non-refundable room for Sunday night in Mount Rushmore. Kids better be ready for a seven hundred mile day.

Back to the road. South Dakota was filled with more corn but the hills flattened out and the road got a lot straighter. Nothing against South Dakota in the eastern part of the state but Nebraska has you beat from a view stand point. Though this is not to say the vistas were not beautiful with the miles of fields, woods peppering the landscape and rivers and streams winding through them all.

We hit Fargo at rush hour. Rush hour for Fargo being akin to about two in the afternoon on our local freeway with the lanes about seventy-five percent full. Clearing Fargo without even knowing it we entered Minnesota, Land of 10,000 lakes. Meandering through the woods with sudden breaks in the trees revealing a large, or small, lake, or perhaps fields with horses or cattle, we were on county roads and after cruising at a good clip--let's say a bit above the posted limits--for 2000 miles the last 100 was at a relative crawl. All the more so because we were so close to our destination.

At 7:30 we finally came to the end of the quarter mile gravel drive and arrived at Camp Birchwood. Our girls home for the past eleven days and ours for the next three.

Part I complete, time for some rest, fun at camp sailing, swimming, and other activities before we depart very early Sunday morning to make our non-refundable reservation at Mount Rushmore.

(Sorry for the crummy picture quality, something up with the Blackberry camera that makes stuff blurry than it needs to be).

Here is the path Leslie and I take from our cabin next door to camp to get to camp for our meals, activities and haning out. At the top is my view this morning after a sail as I do some work before lunch. Nice office!