In 1995, we added my grad school housemate, Mathilda, to our hiking troupe, and decided to check out the western end of the North Country Trail. Prior to that time I'd only driven through North Dakota in the winter, and we had no idea what to expect. Except for the heat, we were delighted!
I'll start at the end. We finished at the western terminus in Lake Sakakawea State Park. There was no lovely sign there at that time, just a small post in the ground.
We were astonished at all the water. I had not previously realized that this was the prairie pothole region and there was lots of water and lots of waterfowl. I've always loved this picture. It just says North Dakota to me. Potholes and headwaters of the Sheyenne River behind us.
We started at the eastern edge of the Lonetree Wildlife Management Area near Harvey, ND, and hiked west. The "Mighty Og" was a privately constructed bit of roadside art that we found hilarious. It's gone now.
I'd love to show you lots of pictures from that hike, but I'll try to limit myself. Almost all the wildflowers were new to me. This is purple prairie clover.
The white pelicans were amazing. They remain one of my favorite birds, although they are so shy I have yet to get a truly decent picture of one.
My scariest night outside, ever, was on that trip as we survived an impressive thunderstorm while completely exposed on a bluff. And we'll never again find ticks problematic. We were covered with them all the time. We had to wipe quantities of them off each other at every stop.
The biggest problem was the relentless heat. It was over 100° many days in a row. If we couldn't find any shade (if we could, it was usually a single tree), we took to setting up our tarp at lunch and taking a snooze. We were super-thankful for the irrigation canal. We continaully wet our shirts and hiked until they dried- under a half hour, and then we did it again. In the evening we swam. It was always there so we had water to filter.
This was the first trip of many where my feet turned to hamburger. It was pretty awful. Mostly I just learned to walk anyway. It took 19 years, and many iterations of attempts to solve this problem, before we figured out that I needed to ditch the boots and use trail runners. The boots kept my feet too hot.
And at the end of these 134 challenging miles, I realized... I wanted to hike the entire NCT.
I had delusions that Chips would be able to do it all with me. Of course, dogs don't live long enough at the rate we were hiking. And his life would be shortened even more. But, to my knowledge, he still hold the record for the canine with the most unique miles on the NCT at about 1200.
Following this hike, I attended my first ever NCTA Conference to see if I wanted to get involved with this organization. Well... I think you know how that turned out.
I edited, did errands, washed dishes, blah blah.
 | See Allegheny NF- 1994 |
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