North Dakota

I was in North Dakota earlier this week. Its because there are three states - North Dakota, Alabama, and Maine - that I have never been to. I have kind of been in Alabama, I think I drove into it just a bit, but don't feel like I can count that. But Maine is off the list now. I took Amtrak there - a full 24 hour trip each way. I even enjoyed that. It was a little long, but I got to see the country and read a couple books along the way. I got off at the first North Dakota stop available. Williston is a nice town. It has about 27,000 people and pretty nice. One weird thing is that sunset was 9:57 pm. At 10:30 it was still pretty light. Really late. I guess because it was around the longest day of the year and its far north, about 50 miles from Canada, but still seemed odd.

I stayed there a day in a Super 8. "Super" is perhaps a misnomer, but it was good enough. There were some cities we went through that there appeared to be no paved roads. Things really can very from state to state. You wouldn't see a lot of unpaved roads in, say, Connecticut.