Return to the Frozen North

We didn't expect to be back here at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, but circumstances changed.  I got an offer for temporary promotion that I couldn't refuse, and here we are.  The temperature was hovering around zero when we got here, a bit of a shock when you're used to 40.  It's already been down to -9.

We needed to get out of the house we were in back in Larned anyway, so we were going to have to move it.  So our stuff is all in storage, and what a mountain of stuff it is.  I don't know how a person gets so much. 

After we moved to Kansas, we started a campaign to rid ourselves of some of our useful but unnecessary stuff.  Too lazy to have a garage sale, we just made donations to the library, Goodwill, and put up some good stuff on Freecycle.org.  That helped.  What was left, I started packing meticulously into our storage unit with the help of my dad, who I somehow convinced to come help with this whole operation.  I started weeks earlier, stacking plastic tubs and boxes in the back as high as they'd go, then furniture.  Before we knew it, we had packed ourselves out the door with no room for anything else.

In my years traveling between the parks, I will say one thing I've learned is that everything you really need can fit into your car and go down the road.  If you can't do that with it, you probably don't need it.  I pulled a U-Haul trailer 850 miles across the country (and watched my fuel economy in alarm the whole way) just to get all of baby's extra stuff up here.  A third person throws the equation off for us, but we are adapting.

Most things have stayed the same here, but some things have changed a lot.  Most noticeably, there are a lot more oil wells near Dickinson.  Way more.  The other is the elk reduction staff working in the park, which has our street bustling with early-morning activity several days a week and our housing crammed full.

Baby Alison has enjoyed North Dakota so far.  She's quite wiggly, coos and babbles, and stays warm under many layers of clothes.  She also likes looking out the window at the buttes just like everybody else.