Gravy Is Good

If you thought the bugs on the windshield were bad yesterday, you should have seen them today. It's just downright disgusting. Today was another day of driving through the plains, some in the U.S., some in Canada. The plains of North Dakota looked like this:

 While in Canada, we added this:

There were fields of this yellow flowers. It was actually quite beautiful. I believe Tracy Edward got it right on Facebook--rapeseed. Canola oil is derived from it. And a little tidit--rapeseed oil was "rebranded" canola oil (Canadian oil) when Canada formulated the new product. (There are a lot more details, but frankly, it's not that interesting.)

On these "just get there" travel days, the highlight is the interesting food we experience along the way. For lunch, we stopped at a little diner called Kroll's.

At Kroll's we ate knoephla and fleischkuechle. I know, God bless you! I tried to pronounce it when the cute little old waitress gave me a lesson, but I'm not sure I ever got it right. Knoephla is a creamy chicken broth with little dumplings and potatoes:

The fleischkuechle was a little meat pie served with homemade, red mashed potatoes and a killer gravy:

Both were quite good.

Had it not been for North Dakota, we would not have driven to Canada. We would have flown into Edmonton or Calgary and driven to the mountains. These two days have definitely been days to wind down and decompress. We're just a few hours from Calgary and another hour or two to the mountains, so we have most of the long days of driving without seeing much behind us...

Oh wait, have I mentioned poutine? I know, it's origin is Quebec, but it's become quite ubiquitous in Canada. In fact, it's made its way down to the states. Can I tell you that poutine makes me happy? It's french fries covered with cheese or cheese curds, smothered in brown gravy. I know, I'm not sure there's much on the planet that could be worse for you than poutine, but man it's good.

That's it for tonight. Here's the final glow of the sun at 10:00 p.m. Good night!