North to North Dakota, South to Oklahoma
I went out to Kansas City a couple days before USITT in the hopes of chasing some storms. The severe weather wasn't cooperating, so my backup plan was to visit some of the remaining states I hadn't visited ( Michigan, New Mexico, Iowa, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Hawaii). I arrived late into KC late last Saturday night, drove north a while and crashed for the night somewhere in Missouri. The next morning, I headed north into Iowa.
I made it through Minnesota, stopping briefly in Fergus Falls:
And made it to Fargo:
The next morning I went out to check out some of the flooding I had heard about just north of Fargo:
(Note: the water above is not a lake, it's a flooded field)
Fargo had some flooding in the city too:
I drove down through North Dakota, and stopped for lunch in Sisseton, South Dakota:
I thought this theatre was closed, but amazingly, I saw a flyer for To Save a Life in the Indian reservation gas station, and it's is an indie Christian movie. Too bad I missed it. I got back on the road and saw three trucks of this:
Massive wind turbine blades! I got into Sioux Falls and saw some fighter jets from the local air guard base:
Stopped by the falls too:
Passed the pig arena and got back on the road:
Stopped in the Winnebago Indian Reservation and watched the sunset:
I decided to push on back to Kansas City, and made it in at about midnight. On Friday, I skipped out of the USITT conference and went storm chasing. There weren't any supercells that day (of course, the severe weather outbreak started today, when I'm back home in Brooklyn!), but I did chase and find some very high winds in a severe-warned thunderstorm on the front (link to a video here). I ran all along the front and shot some pics:
And, I made it into Oklahoma, state #47!
And stopped to see some Bison back in Missouri after stumbling on the Prarie State Park:
It's interesting to note too that I was sort of chasing spring down through the plains. The pics from North Dakota all look very wintery, but the more southern states have a lot of greeen. All in all it was nearly 2000 miles, but I checked three states off my list, leaving only Michigan, New Mexico, and Hawaii! What wants to road trip to Michigan?