August 8

View of the day-Al's handy work on the interstate overpass leaving Menoken. His load was just a bit wide, or the crews had their barrels a bit to close.

Well, we thought we had lucked out last night when the weather fizzled out before it reached us. Of course, once again we woke up to lightning, thunder and rain. We decided not to move up to Tuttle with the camper and grain cart, since we wouldn't be cutting for a while. The rain was falling up there as well, and continued on for most of the day.

We met with Tom Isern and his wife Suzanne for breakfast at Sterling, and had a wonderful chat about all things harvesting. We went into Bismarck to do a bit of shopping, then Marilyn dropped Al off at the library with the laptop to do some surfing while she did some "power shopping". After picking him up, we went over to Mandan to the CaseIH dealer to pick up the ball and socket bolt for the engine hood strut to replace the one that had disappeared. Al also managed to find a few farm toys at the dealership that he needed for his collection.

There were severe weather warnings through most of the day and we did get a lot of rain, over an inch and a half in Bismarck, but eventually it moved off to the NE and the sun came out. Again, the cell phone was ringing with farmers looking for harvesters right up until we got back to the camper. By then it was time to take it easy for the rest of the evening.

Al has kept a daily journal during harvest for the past 13 years and Tom thought they might contain some interesting time lines over the years. They stopped in to pick them up to archive them and we chatted further about harvesting. Later, Gerry and Lynn Prevost stopped in for coffee on their way back to Sterling after their Bismarck shopping trip, so we had lots of company.

It started out looking like this entry was going to get posted at a decent time, but once again it will be a trip to the rest stop after midnight.

Another tough day at the mill...