The Birthday Tour: Part 4 Our So-Called Scenic Backway

And practically a stone's throw from Canada, traveling west, we proceeded along the so-called Rendezvous Region Backway through the "Spectacular Pembina Gorge." I suppose I should be more ecstatic about it, but somehow I was not. Maybe it was the construction we ran into on a 2 lane gravel road, which literally made us have to stop in our tracks for 20 minutes, waiting for the pilot car to lead our little caravan of about 10 cars, across a stretch. Apparently, some kind of construction was occurring (invisible construction escaping the naked eye.) And do you know how long it takes to accumulate 10 cars on a North Dakota backroad?

Well, to prevent totally caving to the phenomena of the "grass being greener on the other side," I just boosted the saturation and contrast in this photo:

This is as hilly as you could ever get in North Dakota. I kid you not; this is our ski slope! (My son once broke his collar bone skiing there. The parent accompanying him on this middle school trip really annoyed me when she called me from the hospital, s*l*o*w*l*y dragging it out that she was in the hospital with my son, then digressing into something about the weather, before she told me he was fine! ALWAYS begin these conversation with a parent with the bottom line: "He/she is fine." That's the rule. Don't break it! It's evil to handle it any other way.)

We did have a hitchhiker on our trip to see the scenery. Before we got totally lost, out of range of our Garmin and cell phone coverage. How do you get lost when there are only a handful of roads? And we kept asking, is THIS the spectacular scenic byway?


And we saw wildlife, so all was good.