8 - I Pretty Much Skipped North Dakota
Too soon. After waking to this in Deadwood, North Dakota, I made an executive decision. I wasn’t going north. It’s not like Bruce and I did much in North Dakota in 1978 anyway, except stumble upon a high stakes poker game while looking for a campsite: We left for North Dakota in pitch dark on a totally isolated, unerringly straight 2-lane highway. In 100 miles, on the way to Bowman, ND, we passed two towns; one consisted of nothing but a Conoco station. We made Bowman at 10:30 PM and followed the signs to a (closed) campground. We went back to town and ask directions in a bar to another campground. They directed us, but we got a little confused and followed a dirt road a couple miles to a lighted building. Thinking it may have been the campground, we pulled in, but there was nothing inside but 6 or 7 men around a table involved in a furious game of poker. There was easily a couple hundred bucks on the table.