Abrupt itinerary change

Tomorrow, we leave on the Big Trip of the Summer. We're going to Bismarck, North Dakota.

"We" means me, my kids, and my mother-in-law, Marty Mouse.

We were originally planning a different route. New, for me, and a little more touristy. I won't even tell you what that plan was, because it is now defunct.

Because it was a lame plan.

The kids would have been bored to death.

The new plan is to go to South Dakota--Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument, meander up through Deadwood, drift West and take a few pictures of Devil's Tower, then press on North to the North Dakota badlands, then East 'till Minnesota, stopping only to ponder our existence in the geographical center of North America, which is in Rugby.

North Dakota.

We'll spend one day in Warren. Minnesota. Then we'll take a day trip to see the headwaters of the Mississippi, and finally head back West and a little South, to Bismarck.

North Dakota.

Apparently next Saturday there's a big historical/interpretive weekend at the fort where Lewis & Clark spent the winter before beginning their big fact-finding trip, and also picked up a guide named Sacagawea. Okay, they hired her husband, but she actually did the guiding. If you're not sure who she is, look on the newest US Dollar coin. That's her. The one with the baby on her back. She was born in Idaho but Lewis & Clark found her at a fort.

In North Dakota.

Then we'll do the family reunion thing. I'm not originally from there. But I have some family there.

North Dakota.

The place is not nearly as boring as you'd think. Some of you thought it might have been exiting for a while after that movie came out, but none of it was actually true. What was it called again? Fargo.

North Dakota.

So if you can't get me by e-mail for the next few days, try my cell phone.

I'll be in North Dakota.