The agitation I'd felt as we left town was impossible to maintain. It was swallowed up and replaced for the most part with something called "prairie Zen."
The population of North Dakota could fit comfortably in any New York City block. At 640,000 people and a square mile for every ten of them, it's been described as a small town scattered across a state.
With a third of the population living actually on the eastern border, that leaves plenty of space for the rest. The state is mostly farmland and rolling hills, and in the west, where we were, the vertigo-inducing topography of the Badlands starts maybe halfway up the state. And regardless of how fast you're going or how intense you're driving or how good the Book-on-Tape you've popped in for the drive, it is impossible to entirely shut out the quiet beauty of the surrounding countryside.
Singularly indisposed to conversation and in no immediate mood for music, there was little to do as the miles rolled by except pray. Which I did. Fervently. Beyond miles of mind-numbing bucolia and some irritating road construction – all of it abandoned for the weekend – there is little to see heading south along Highway 83. An unusual metal sculpture welcomes visitors outside of Max, N.D. in letters 20 feet high reading "Max," but that's about it for another 30 miles, at which point two gigantic projects collide.
The Garrison Dam on the Missouri River is mainly responsible for generating an enormous amount of energy for western North Dakota, and for backing up a huge reservoir known as Lake Sakakawea, which measures about 180 miles long and covers nearly 400,000 acres. Completed in 1953, Garrison is the third largest earthen dam in America.
Providing access across this massive inland sea is a couple miles of bridge, banked on both sides by huge, steeply riprapped walls which follow the topography of the earth a few hundred feet down. On one side, enormous steel towers support a dozen thick power lines waving precariously in the high winds off the big lake. On the other, to the south end of the crossing, a white Lincoln Towncar tipped dangerously close to the edge.