Back in North Dakota...

I said I would fill everyone in on getting to Kauai, and then go back to our trip from North Dakota to Texas...

Granpa's last day at Altru in Grand Forks, North Dakota, February 16th, was a Friday.  Saturday morning we hopped in the van and headed home by way of Fort Mandan in the eastern part of North Dakota.  We had been taking a class on Lewis and Clark at the University of North Dakota through their OLLI program.  Granpa was determined to get to Fort Mandan, where Lewis and Clark spent their first winter in 1804-05.

It was Interstate all the way, (for us, not Lewis and Clark!) and so the roads were no worry.  I text Granpa's mother, Granny Beth, as we travel, so that she doesn't worry.  She thanks me all the time; says it makes her feel like she's right there with us.  The bonus is, I have a log of our travel times, places, and things we do.  Funny how, when you do something for someone else, God always has a blessing in it for you!

So it'll will be about an hour's drive south to Fargo, then west about four hours to Bismarck.  The roads were clear and, when the sun came up, so were the skies.  From Bismarck then, it's north to Fort Mandan.

There's a beautiful new Lewis and Clark Museum there.  I knew these folks were larger than life to us, but this is a bit much.

It's so nice when I find someone that makes me feel smaller than my rotund lil' ol' self...

These are beautifully crafted pieces of art.  I'm honored when I imagine them standing for all time for America, representing Lewis and Clark, in circumstances much like the first astronauts on the moon.

Both teams had consciously chosen to go into the unknown without much recourse than to go forward.  Lewis and Clark knew that if they went far enough they would find the Pacific Ocean. Sure, fur trappers had wandered around east of the Rocky Mountains, and almost every international power had sailed - and landed - up and down the west coast.  It was what was in between those points that was the great unknown (to white man anyway).  If Lewis and Clark had known that those mountain ranges would go on and on and on - and on even more - they probably would have never attempted this search for a navigable waterway across America.

However, once President Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase on behalf of America, to actually lay claim to it, an American had to impose the Right of Discovery by walking, paddling, or riding across it - and publish something about the journey.  So these intrepid explorers would have gone regardless of the hazards of the unknown just like America's first men on the moon, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin in 1969.

Wow!  Think about that!  In just 166 years we went from literally struggling to walk across the earth to walking on the MOON!  Thank you, President John F. Kennedy, for saying and believing that Americans do it not because its easy, but because it is hard.  I love our "can do" spirit!

Think about this, too.  America was the first to impose the Right of Discovery on THE MOON!  They planted the ol' red, white, and blue, documented every single step and published it - in real time! - for all the world to see.

  Woohoo!