Peace Out

TWO weekends away in the span of a month! What has happened to me?

I darted out on Sunday (and am unbelievably exhausted today) to go up to the International Peace Gardens with another volunteer. On the back of a motorcycle, no less, but I think I did OK. I didn’t cause any crashes, but I do know to wear more clothes next time. It was very overcast and I was really chilled.

 

North Dakota is the Peace Garden State. If you didn’t know this, well, that’s OK because neither did I. But, for informational purposes, there is a fantastic garden that straddles the border between North Dakota and Manitoba.

We, being newbies to the site, erred on the side of caution at this left turn into the garden. It’s in the zone between the US customs and the Canadian customs, and, since I lived in Detroit, fear ticking off the border guys and suggested we go through Canadian customs instead of just turning straight in.

Well, as it turns out, you can just go straight in, so my trek into Manitoba by motorbike was only the new meters it took to make a U-turn and enter the grounds. The lady said it happens 40 times a day; you’d think they could put up some kind of sign that says, “Really, you can turn left here without standing in line.”

Just over half the park – something like 1,000 acres – is in Manitoba and the other 800 or so is in North Dakota. It’s ridiculously beautiful.

We putzed around a ride around a couple of lakes. Didn’t see any turtles sunning themselves because there was no sun, but we heard some loons and saw some cool trees before we hit the main flower part.

That is just incredible. I took 100 photos exactly. I couldn’t even guess on the number of petals in the photos. They had a couple of side things, like the cactus garden, and I just oohhed and ahhed.

Even though it was overcast and misty, it was really gorgeous.

We made a stop on the way up at some random thing that turned out to be a modern-day Stonehenge. Sitting smack in North Dakota. Who knew?

On the way back, we stopped at an old cemetery in a boarded-up Catholic church. It was on one of the Indian reservations in the area. I saw some headstones that I’d never seen before, like wooden or metal crosses.

My penance for taking a weekend off was that I didn’t get a story written that I should have done. I was supposed to get it to the board members by close of business today.

I wrote it at about 3 p.m., but sent it to two board members for an early look in hopes of getting feedback before sending it to the rest. It’s a story on the exit plan as the organization winds down.

October 31 is the hoped-for end date of the rebuild. There are a lot of things that have to fall into place, but the idea of the story is to stave off panic of flooded homeowners when they see Hope Village bedroom sleeping units being packed up for deployment to Moore, Okla.

It doesn’t appear I am going to get the draft back, though, so I’m just going to cut my losses and send that version to the board. I really need to give them time to get their input before I send it out.

So peace out.