I awoke at the crack of dawn this morning around 8:15am for a lesson on the Anderson farm in Rugby, ND. I rode along in the tractor, learned about combines, and really got a solid overview on farming. The amount of technology involved in operations these days is surprising; autopilot, gps, & air seeders. It really was fascinating for this city boy to see how middle America "tills the land," and I actually learned what that phrase meant.
On the drive to the Anderson's cabin in Minnesota we made a stop at Fort Totten, the proclaimed best preserved military post of the Dakota frontier era. I am not entirely sure how prestigious that title is, but nonetheless it was neat to see. Brevet Major General Joseph Gilbert Totten was the chief engineer in the U.S. Army at the time of it's completion and thus the fort was named in his honor. In the honor of my arrival at Fort Totten I paid full admission even though I am the closest living direct descendant of dear Major General Joseph, which the lady in the gift shop wasn't having at all. As well she shouldn't because I totally made that up.
Now being from Los Angeles, I grew up understanding that the emergency broadcast system on the radio was a big crack up. You hear the terrible beeping sound, the lady says "this is a test" and you go along your way happy because you'll never recover the lost 45 seconds of Ryan Seacrest in the morning. Driving through North Dakota and Minnesota today changed that for me. I heard eleven severe weather warnings including golf ball sized hail, severe thunderstorms, and tornadoes. Luckily by the time I encountered the hail and thunderstorms I was already at the lake house, and the funnel clouds never touched ground.
We were standing on the dock at Bad Medicine Lake in Minnesota when this huge cloud system came out of nowhere and took the sky. It was one of the funkiest things I have ever seen, and I have seen some funk in my short life. The black clouds rushed over the lake at immense speed and totally filled the sky, and the stillness was suddenly filled with winds that grew to a reported 65 miles per hour. I mean the entire scene changed in about six minutes. But on the water, this eerie white wispy fog took flight toward us at an extremely quick pace. Recognizing this as being bad, MaryAnn said "It's time to get inside." And immediately God let loose and we ran inside where we watched the storm pass.
