First, I had one horrible day last week (I think it was Thursday), and it kind of ruined the next few days for me. I won't go into details here, because I never know who reads this thing and I don't want to publicize any information that others would prefer me to keep private, but suffice it to say that Thursday pretty much sucked on multiple counts. So I didn't sleep well on Thursday night at all, which set me up for a crap Friday as well. Thankfully, I had a good time on Friday night with some friends, but then after I got home I kept waking up and running to the bathroom because I felt like I was going to throw up. Sorry if that's more than you wanted to know... the long and short of it is that Saturday I came down with some horrible stomach bug that had me in and out of the bathroom in incredible pain all day Saturday and Sunday. And no, I don't think it's the ulcer, back with a vengeance. I really think it was just a stomach bug, for various reasons that I will not explain in detail. It's mostly gone now, but I've just been in this lame-o queasy funk for the past few days, and I'm about ready for it to be done.
On the slightly brighter side, I sat down and did some soul-searching regarding my dissertation today (which is part of what's been putting me in a funk), and I do feel a little bit better about it. I sort of have a plan, but I've been struggling to reorient my research trajectory to position myself for the job I'd like to apply for for next year, and trying to figure out how to do that, and how to package a small set of mish-mash projects into one sensible storyline has been bugging me for some time now. There are several studies I'd like to do, but I haven't made myself sit down and work out a detailed plan for them, and they feel a little all over the place. I know they must have some thread tying them together, since I'm the one who thought of them, so today I sat down and thought about why exactly I'm interested in pursuing those studies. It helped organize my thinking a bit, and I do think I'm making progress. I'm just feeling kind of... discouraged and scatterbrained and slightly incompetent. I'm going to do the same thing tomorrow, and then meet with my advisors on Friday with A Definitive Plan in hand, and hopefully then I'll feel like I have a definite direction again.
Okay, now. On the much brighter side, I'm going to put up some more pictures from our road trip. First, I'm going to add a great picture of some weird neon orange dirt to the Yellowstone post from last time, so you should go back and check it out. Now I'm going to pick the narrative back up: we just spent the night at a rest area just over the mountains into southwestern Montana, after having spent the day at Yellowstone.
We woke up early the next morning (or in my case, never really got to sleep the night before), and Jevon drove while I napped. We drove and drove and drove and drove. Montana was really beautiful, and really big, and it felt nice to be getting into some landscape that felt 'close to home'; it's amazing how comforting a prairie can be when you've spent the first twenty-some years of your life in a prairie state. By early afternoon, we crossed the state line into North Dakota, and we decided to stop at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Part of me wishes we could have done the National Parks in the reverse order from how we did them. T.R. National Park was really awesome and beautiful, but it was hard for me to appreciate it when it was immediately preceded by Yellowstone and Crater Lake. I mean, those are pretty hard to top. But T.R. was beautiful in its own, badlands-y way.
The badlands are a really cool area of the country. I still don't entirely know what 'badlands' means, except that it's apparently some kind of geological terrain that's characterized by cool rock formations that have been carved out by wind and water erosion, over a period of thousands of years. I know it doesn't seem that exciting in the picture, but we saw some super cool rocks with holes right through them that had been caused by the blustery wind that just constantly pounds the landscape. So this rock is the very small scale version of how the entire landscape was formed:
I've never been to Africa, but when we took the winding road up to the highest point in the park and looked down over the river and the flood plains, it reminded me an awful lot of the Africa shots from Planet Earth, a documentary we recently watched about all the cool ecosystems on earth. We saw part of a herd of buffalo fording the river, too, with their babies in tow. It was pretty neat.
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| See the buffalo herd, in the water? |
What was even neater, though (despite freaking me out a bit), was when we were headed out of the park, and we came across said buffalo herd completely blocking the road. There was nothing to do except stop the car and sort of idle our way through, as the herd parted and let us pass. They were right next to me, out the driver's side window, and they seemed like they couldn't care less that we were there, but it was kind of freaky, nonetheless.
We didn't spend too too long at T.R. National Park before we were on the road again, headed straight south out of North Dakota. My atlas perusal revealed that we would be passing almost directly through the geographical center of the United States, so of course we had to go there. When else am I going to be driving through western South Dakota with nothing but time?
So we took a 12 mile detour to go through the center of the country, and it was totally worth it. Not that it was particularly cool, but it was pretty fun to be in the absolute middle of nowhere, following a country road in the most deserted place I've ever been to. There is nothing in the western part of the Dakotas. Nothing. There were a few towns marked on the atlas, but when we would pass through them, they would consist of a single trailer and a convenience store, if you were lucky. It's apparently the kind of place where you honestly have to worry about running out of gas and being stranded. I had never been to such a sparsely populated area, and it was surprisingly creepy.
Anyway, in case you were wondering what the geographical center of the nation looks like and you don't think you're going to make the trip any time soon, I am happy to provide the following documentation.
We could have easily missed it. Do you see the landscape in the background? That's what that entire afternoon's worth of driving looked like. Which might go some ways toward explaining the following two pictures; sometimes you have to add some artificial excitement to your life.
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| Look at me! I'm out of the car! |
We also jumped the fence and went and took our pictures by the flag in the middle of the field, since we figured it was probably marking the exact center of the nation. And also because we had been in the car for several days straight. And also because we're silly.
Here's what the view across from the center of the nation looks like. This was the only structure we came across on this road, and that's our car, parked next to the pile of rocks and the sign.
So after that excitement was passed, we got back in the car, drove the 12 miles back to the main road, and headed on our way. Our last major national park/sightseeing stop was in the southwestern part of South Dakota, where we went to Wind Cave National Park (sort of), the Crazy Horse monument, Mount Rushmore, and Badlands National Park.
But that will have to be for next time!
... I do feel a bit better, by the way. I think I might bake some bread and curl up with a good statistics book.
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