Greetings, friends!
I write to you from Cody, Wyoming, a town steeped in the myth-making of the American West. I'm on my way home to Portland after a few days in North Dakota, where some urgent developments on my great-grandmother's homestead needed my attention. I'll be writing more about it soon—it's something of a postscript to Windfall. But I can't spoil the outcome! You'll have to wait to hear what happened/what's happening.
So I thought I'd write a bit this week about what it takes to pull off a last-minute trip. How much it costs, how I manage the effect of all that driving on my body, how I plan (or don’t plan) the logistics. And why I brought my dog, Mojie, after vowing she'd never have to return with me to North Dakota.
I've been doing these trips from Oregon to North Dakota for so long that I know the good places to stop for the night, which gas stations have decent sandwiches (Town Pump), where I can save money by camping if the weather's pleasant, and how to maximize my days by doing some of the driving in the dark. And yes, that sometimes I need to stop to recover in a quiet hotel before making my next move.
On this 13th trip I have, unsurprisingly, experienced some minor bad luck.
It was a last-minute and possibly unwise decision to go. Not because I didn't urgently need to be in North Dakota in person, but because I had a minor cold when I began the trip that evolved into a full-blown supercold. By the time I arrived in Sidney on the Montana/North Dakota border, I was so sick that I’d lost my voice and was forced to cancel an interview in nearby Fort Peck. I had to visit a rural health clinic and obtain a prescription for an inhaler to help me breathe. And then I needed to rest for the day, before I even arrived where I needed to be.
Also: This trip had to be done on the cheap. As many of you know, I'm developing a new project about monuments, and I don't have much income coming in right now. My husband, Chris, was out of town, which meant I had to bring Mojie with me; since I hadn't budgeted for a trip this month and couldn't justify hiring a dog sitter. When I started out, I wasn't sure I'd land an assignment that could cover my costs.
The first night, I left in the afternoon and drove to a little motel between Spokane, Washington and Missoula, Montana. It's the inn along I-90 at a roadside attraction called the $50,000 Silver Dollar Bar, which as the name suggests, includes a bar with thousands of silver dollars embedded into it. I hadn’t ever stayed at the inn, but I knew it was well-kept and cheap. I paid $106 for the night, half the cost of something comparable in Missoula or Spokane.
I had called ahead to make a reservation. On these trips, I like to know where I'll be spending the night. Having a place to go as an anchor for your day gives you the freedom to commit to the work you're there to do, without occupying your brain with the logistics of where you will sleep and shower. Your days are free for discovery.
Lookout Pass between Idaho and Montana can be harrowing in the daylight under even the best conditions, and the conditions on this trip were among the worst I'd ever experienced. Sleet was falling and the temperature hovered just at freezing, which meant black ice and little drifts of slippery ice pellets lingering in the curves of the dark road. The storm caught everyone by surprise; Idaho State Police were escorting drivers to the top of the pass. There are always many trucks on this stretch of highway, but as I headed into Montana, I drove down the mountain terrified a semi would lose control and smash into me.
Yet I arrived safely, albeit not until 11 p.m. The desk clerk was waiting for me, worried about the conditions on the pass. (He's on the volunteer fire department.) I slept soundly and ate free pancakes at the café the next morning. This is one of my budget tactics: Load up on free hotel breakfast so you need only snacks and one other meal the rest of the day.
I wanted to keep this trip to under $2,000, or less than $250 a day for gas, food and lodging. Costly things kept happening, though, my visit to urgent care among them. One night, I set the box that holds my camera gear on my hood as I was unloading my car, and it slid down, breaking my most expensive and nicest lens. And I was pulled over for speeding in North Dakota. (Only a $35 fine, but still.)
I mention all the bad stuff, but the trip has actually been amazing. (Sorry for the teasers, but I promise to share more soon.)
Having my dog along was sweet this time, especially the day I was really sick; yes, I had to walk her, but she also did a really good job snuggling with me. It was helpful to have a friend in the back seat who knew exactly what her assignment was on this trip. I rewarded her with an off-leash romp in the Badlands, two days of running around farms in North Dakota and a visit to the Jacobs Island dog park in the middle of Missoula. Mojie doesn't bark much, but she busted out her deepest, meanest alert when an armed man (a cop) approached my car to issue me a speeding ticket. Dogs recognize male menace. "She takes good care of me," I told him, unapologetic for the booming bark. For her loyalty, she earned a vanilla scoop from Dairy Queen.
Back in 2020, I rented a Sprinter van for one of my reporting trips to North Dakota. The guy I borrowed the van from gave me some advice before I departed. Inevitably, things will break, he told me. You will find yourself in weird jams. (Oh boy, did I.) But stuff can be patched up, hosed off or replaced. My life is not replaceable, he told me, and I should make decisions in the van accordingly. I keep that advice in mind whenever I travel.
On these trips, I prioritize sleep, which sometimes means I start the day late. If I'm in a hotel, I push the checkout time to its limit, using the morning hours to write or conduct phone interviews before heading out for the day. I will wake up early for photos or video or crucial interviews or experiences, but in general, I'd rather capture late afternoon and early evening light. And I follow a rule I learned from my uncle Larry, a pilot: Eight hours bottle-to-throttle. I don't drink much, so to me that just means eight hours of sleep before driving long distances. I haven't felt well enough for long hikes on this trip, but I make time on all journeys for movement breaks. For long driving days, I wear compression socks.
These are sweeping generalizations about the states I've traveled through over the past 11 years for this project, but I think I've earned some perspective. Hurry through eastern Washington and northern Idaho, but linger in Boise. Fill up on salad in Missoula, because good food in Western North Dakota can be scarce. The coffee is weak in North Dakota, but people are so kind to visitors; someone will always help out with directions or advice, even if they disagree with your politics. People have your back in rural Montana and will tow you out of the mud; they know they're just as likely to need a hand themselves someday. Beware Bozeman, which has been ruined by wealth. Feed stores always sell better supplies than Wal-Mart. I've spent less time in Wyoming, but every time I'm here, I encounter a mean edge that keeps me on alert.
I'm writing this from a dog-friendly Super 8 in Cody, where I've paused for a few days to put some words on the page about what happened in North Dakota. And to do a little research for the monument project at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
This time, I've spent hundreds of miles driving with the radio off, thinking through what I still need to say about my old project even as I barrel wholeheartedly into the new one. This project has cost me over the years—time and money and other opportunities. But my drives through the golden rolling prairies of Eastern Montana and Western North Dakota have sustained me, too. Every time I make the journey, I learn something new about this country and how the story of oil and extraction is the story of America. About how past cruelties shape us, but how generous and kind and resourceful we are, too.
And how, with a good night's sleep, anything is possible.
Yours,
Erika
THE NEWS
All the links…
Writing is a blood-and-guts business. How the physical experience of writing—and researching and reporting—contributes to the final product in a way AI will never replicate.
Craig Mod writes about long walks, mainly in Japan. But there’s always something beautiful beyond walking in his newsletters, and I found myself nodding wholeheartedly with what he says about logistics.
College students are behaving like students. The adults are behaving horribly.
Two monument-related reads, passed along by subscribers to The Windfall Dispatch. Oh, how it makes my day when you all send me stuff like this! Turning Public Art Upside Down and The Power of Place and the Malleability of Monuments. Thank you Sarah and Terri!
Thanks for the link to Rachel Khong’s piece (loved “Goodbye Vitamin”). Her commentary reminds me of something I once read about cooking: that our favorite ancestral recipes can’t ever be truly replicated because they literally contain the taste of the hands that made them, from the cells sloughed off amid peeling, chopping, mixing, kneading, etc. Writing isn’t quite as visceral, of course, but there’s a similar shedding. Call it a mindprint, like the fingerprints we leave on the food we prepare.