5/5/2014

Happy Cinco de Mayo from Dickinson, ND.  We have been here since Friday, camped in one of the 100's of 'temporarily permanent' campgrounds that have sprung up in NW N Dakota.  Folks are living in campers all over the place while working in the oil fields.  We also saw a extended stay hotel in Williston listing the rooms at $699/week.  $100/nite is a lot to pay for those dinky rooms in those places.  And surely their families are somewhere else, so they pay for their lodging too.  These campgrounds are pretty awful, no grass, dirt all around the campers & dusty roads which must turn to mud when it rains.  Tough times!!

On Saturday, we drove 100 miles north, which let us see a lot of western ND.  Lake Sakakawea is the lake formed by the Garrison Dam that was built in the 50's to harness the Missouri River.  We crossed it at Newtown, a village relocated by the rising river/lake.  I lived near here in Tioga and played the Newtown football team in 1967...brought back some memories.  The lake is full these days and has a huge amount of shoreline, but without a basic permanent population and a very short summer season, we saw precious few places to launch boats or have picnics.  It is a very barren place.

Our trip then carried us up a gravel road for 15 miles through very rural, very uninhabited countryside.  The only humans we saw were truck drivers moving tankers of oil from oil field to wherever it needed to go. They were in a hurry, probably getting paid by the load.  We just got of their way and let them go on their way.  Eventually, we arrived in Tioga, my home in the mid 60's.  It has not changed too much.  The house we lived in is a different color and has a wood deck by the front door so they can sit & stare at the refinery.

Where I lived during 1965 & 66

The school is the same, sitting on the NW corner of town with the same issues as 40+ years ago...impossible to keep warm when it is -40 and the wind is blowing.  Gee, I miss that!

Other than some new houses here & there and a new section on the south side, it is basically the same.  There is a lot of oil businesses operating on the south edge of town, but only 1 grocery store & 1 gas station and 2 restaurants...pretty lame.  I wonder where all the town folks get their basic needs? We then drove back via US 2 which is now a 4 lane highway.  We traveled thru Williston which is the center of the oil business.  It has grown a lot and is a very unattractive prairie town, lots of temporary housing and commercial buildings everywhere that look like they were placed wherever someone thought it would work...no planning went into it at all.  On the rest of the trip back to Dickinson, the oil businesses dwindled & so did the RV parks. But they never stopped...in fact Dickinson has more than its share.  We are both glad we live where we do.

Steve & Barb Larson

Tioga High School

Typical RV Park in NW N Dakota