Fargo, ND

Wow, I thought Kansas was boring. Then I drove through five more states just like Kansas. Here is my impression of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota: corn, corn, corn, cows, corn, cows. Oh look, soybeans! More corn. And perfectly flat. If I stood on a coffee can, I could see Denver. Wyoming was at least interesting in its nothingness because it was so beautiful and so empty at the same time. Those six states, at least the part along the interstates, are just populated enough to keep them from being truly remote, and so they've become elevated to merely boring. And I've seen plenty of corn and cows in my time--I no longer find cornfields either pretty or interesting. Sorry, Midwesterners.

However, Fargo was more interesting than I thought it would be. It's mostly a university town, so in the summer it's deserted. But it's got a cute little downtown and some great houses. My couchsurfing hosts have a very Brooklyn-esque apartment, at I'm sure a twentieth of Brooklyn prices, and because there's no one around during the summer, I don't have to worry about rush hour traffic at all. It's the only large city ("large," anyway) between Minneapolis and Spokane, so it's got a pretty decent music scene. Still. Once you get off the interstate in this part of the world, there really is nothing.

This may be my last opportunity to see nothing, however. Today I head to Chicago via Minneapolis, and then on to Tennessee, Kentucky, and back up to Toronto before I loop around the Northeast. Soon I'll be back in familiar territory. It hasn't quite sunk in that the road trip is almost over...