The Best View of Williston, ND: My Rearview Mirror

When we pulled into the Knutsons’ driveway on Wednesday evening (Aug 31), I’d never been so happy to see a place in my life. After 13 hours on the road, and a nearly sleepless night previous, stepping out of the truck put me in a state of instant euphoria, which lasted until the next morning at 9 am, when we pulled out of the driveway again.

John and Sue were the perfect hosts, cooking us a homemade dinner and providing comfortable beds and a shower. We even got to socialize with the neighbors, Steve & Jackie Thomas, who stopped by to say hello. Better than any campsite, by far! The added bonus was that I slept like a rock for 8 hours, completely oblivious to the thunderstorm that kept Dad awake in the camper half the night (the other half of the night he was up trying to get the battery to charge). He came inside looking rather disgruntled in the morning, and I felt well-rested and ready to hit the road. Although the camper is 10 times better than a tent, it doesn’t compare to a home. Guess I know what I won’t be doing when I hit retirement.

Despite John and Sue’s impeccable taste and hospitality, I made one crucial miscalculation: when we asked John’s recommendation of a place to stay between East Grand Forks and Yellowstone NP, I trusted his choice of Williston, ND. In retrospect, I can’t think of a town that I would rather drive through on the way to somewhere else. Williston is comparable to a busy ant colony, abuzz with the activity of people drilling, pumping, fracking, driving, camping, building, and selling their souls for the oil industry. It’s the ugly side of oil that I would rather avoid: fields and farmland turned into oil wells, quaint streets surrounded by dirty asphalt-less parking lots, small towns transformed into stopovers for 18 wheelers. It’s the antithesis of what our road trip is about – escaping the rat race of the daily routine and enjoying the pristine unadulterated wilderness that is left in North America. Of course, the irony of this is not lost on me – our trip to Alaska on a diesel-fueled truck which gets about 12 miles to the gallon would not be possible without that precious resource that is being pumped out of the ground around Williston.

Not only was the ugly underbelly of the oil industry so obviously exposed to anyone passing by, but the town lacked the rustic Wild West quality which Dad had led me to expect. I was hoping to witness the modern day equivalent of Deadwood, where laws didn’t matter, people were drunk in the streets, whore houses were on every corner, and brawls broke out over nothing. Sadly, this was not the case. Williston was just an overbuilt town crawling with human activity. The most exciting things about our stay there were the $1 beers and the free shower for Thomas. No brawls, whores, drunks, or even general misconduct were evident anywhere.

Today, I couldn’t have been more happy to say adieu to Williston and hit the road to Yellowstone National Park. The sun is shining and we’re in Big Sky country. We should arrive in time to make a campfire (a first for this trip) and sit outside under the stars. I know, it won’t compare to the RV Park in Williston with the semi-trucks whizzing by, but we’ll make do.