New Fresh Wheat Spouts From This Minnesota Springtime Field.
"I’ve wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn’t see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps, into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I’m looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling."
Rt55 RR Overpass 3Mi West of Kimball, MN. If you are aware of other good photos of scenery, marshes etc along MN Rt55, please let me know. This photo is an 8 picture panorama. Click, on photo /twice for largest view which is about 7 feet wide. As you "scroll" through this panorama (to the right) your view will be all the way around the horizon, full circle, 360 degrees!! Your first view in this panorama is East. As you swing around you begin to see the highway again at the Panorama Center. This is West and the direction of travel for the ZMM Route. North is direction to right of the largest tree and farm buildings beyond the highway guardrail. If your computer screen does not show the full height you can get a larger view by going to top of your browser screen and clicking View Full Screen.
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(Photo = 102-0270+7sc ...... ZMM Page = 005 ...... WayPt = 003x 1212ft)

Southeastern North Dakota, Like Kansas, "Is Flatter Than a Pancake. "I suddenly notice the land here has flattened into a Euclidean plane. Not a hill, not a bump anywhere. This means we have entered the Red River Valley. We will soon be into the Dakotas." (Start Chapter 3) "By the time we are out of the Red River Valley the storm clouds are everywhere and almost upon us. .. John and I have discussed the situation in Breckenridge and decided to keep going until we have to stop." ~22 Mi West-Breckenridge, MN. Panorama with Lone Windmill. Here the ZMM traveler is leaving the Red River Valley Area of Eastern North Dakota. This is an 8 picture panorama. Click photo for the largest view. You must use the right (and bottom) "arrow-keys" to view the whole picture. Highway going off into the distance at the beginning of the panorama, is exactly East. (Opposite to ZMM Route direction of travel as indicated by my car.) As you "scroll" through this panorama your view will be all the way around the horizon, full circle!! The highway going into the distance (at approximate panorama center) is West, and the direction of the ZMM Route. North is in direction perpendicular to the car side of the highway.
(Photo = 102-0294+7sc ...... ZMM Page = 025 ...... WayPt = 017x 1355ft)

Panorama Showing An Abandoned Prairie Homestead With WinPanorama Showing An Abandoned Prairie Homestead With Windmill. This Panorama Will Give You An Idea What It Is Like to Live and Travel In the Lonely Isolated Wide Open Northern Planes.
"Later, when we stop, Sylvia has tears in her eyes from the wind, and she stretches out her arms and says, "It’s so beautiful. It’s so empty." .... John gets his camera out. .. After a while he says, "This is the hardest stuff in the world to photograph. You need a three-hundred-and-sixty degree lens, or something. You see it, and then you look down in the ground glass and it’s just nothing. As soon as you put a border on it, it’s gone." .. I say, "That’s what you don’t see in a car, I suppose." .. Sylvia says, "Once when I was about ten we stopped like this by the road and I used half a roll of film taking pictures. And when the pictures came back I cried. There wasn’t anything there." .. "When are we going to get going?" Chris says.“ [John Sutherland has since become a professional photographer, and is very much interested in the Photographic Arts. ]
12Mi West of Ellendale, ND. Having stopped to photograph this Farm House & Windmill, I Remember John’s statement above and proceed to capture this panoramic scene with a nine photo "360 deg Panorama".
As I prepared to "shoot" this panorama, I became concerned that too much of the highway was showing in my panoramas. So wanted to try an experiment: I decided, contrary to my other panoramas, that I should try to "eliminate the highway". So I took the first four photos on the North side of the highway and the last five photos on the South side of the highway. The result is here. As you can see this photo technique has that unfortunate break in the middle. This break defies any reasonable stitch to bridge the gap, so I abandoned this method. (My 9 unedited original photos may be viewed at the last panorama in this album.)
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(Photo = 103-103 0353+9sc ...... ZMM Page = 042 ...... WayPt = 045`|w|' 1542ft )

Clouds & Sunset, Open Space, & Lone Windmill. The Buildings Seen In the Distance Are the Next Town. Are..
"So we move down the empty road. I don’t want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going. We are just moving down the empty road. End Ch 4 & start Ch 5] The flatness of the prairie disappears and a deep undulation of the earth begins. Fences are rarer, and the greenness has become paler . . . all signs that we approach the High Plains."
Elevator in Distance is Macintosh, ND. When I was at this location, the sound of the light wind and sounds of distant Redwing Blackbirds, are to me, strangely comforting, despite otherwise silent lonely terrain. The highway at the beginning of panorama is West, the direction of the ZMM Route. North is directly over the car roof. Next, coming into view, you will again see the highway going off into the distance. This is East, opposite to the direction of the ZMM Route. When you see the three larger fence posts, this is South. The panorama continues to "swing around" till you see glow of the sunset for the second time. This photo is an 8 picture panorama. Click photo for a largest view. As you "scroll" through this panorama your will view all the way around the horizon, more than 360 degrees!!
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(Photo = 104-0401+7sc ...... ZMM Page = 049 ...... WayPt = 064fx 2264ft)

Grain Stores & Colloid Plant With Mining Lift Towers in Distance
"Heat is everywhere now. I can’t ignore it anymore. The air is like a furnace blast so hot that my eyes under the goggles feel cool compared to the rest of my face. My hands are cool but the gloves have big black spots from perspiration on the back surrounded by white streaks of dried salt. .. On the road ahead a crow tugs on some carrion and flies up slowly as we approach. It looks like a lizard on the road, dry and stuck to the tar. .. On the horizon appears an image of buildings, shimmering slightly. I look down at the map and it must be Bowman. I think about ice water and air conditioning."
Gascoyne, ND.. I came through a month earlier that the ZMM Narrator, so in contrast to his sun "burned grass and clumps of earth ", for me it was more like cool clear spring time! Clearly there has been a whole lot more rain that was reported in ZMM for this area of Western North Dakota. At the beginning of the panorama, the Highway going off into the distance is West, the ZMM Route direction of travel. As you "scroll" through this panorama your view will be all the way around the horizon, full circle!! North is in direction perpendicular to the car side of the highway. The highway going into the distance (approximate panorama center) is East, and opposite the direction of the ZMM Route.
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(Photo = 104-0432+8sc ...... ZMM Page = 049 ...... WayPt = 075x 2820ft)

Lots Of Space Out Here, But No Loneliness! Several Miles West of Bowman, ND.
"Before we are out of town I am sweating again. The cool drying-off period doesn’t last even half a minute. .. The heat just slams into us. Even with dark sunglasses I have to squint my eyes into slits. There’s nothing but burning sand and pale sky so bright it’s hard to look anywhere. It’s just become white-hot everywhere. A real inferno."
3 Mi W of Rhame, ND. You can tell from the dense low clouds in my photo that it was cool and ready to rain. At the beginning of the panorama, the Highway going off into the distance is West, the ZMM Route direction of travel. As you scroll, you will see my car. I stopped here because that dirt road (see stop sign) provided a safe place for me to park my car off the Highway. You can see this dirt road come in from the North, go by the neat farm house, cross the highway at my car, disappear behind the low hill, and gradually fade into the prairie distance to the South. That miniature mountain has a curious dark hole. Does any one know what is inside? The highway going into the distance (approximate panorama center) is East, and opposite the direction of the ZMM Route. North is in direction perpendicular to the car side of the highway.
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(Photo = 104-0449+7sc ...... ZMM Page = 073 ...... WayPt = 078x 3445ft)

A Panorama Showing Spring Time in Montana: Clouds & Sky. Cattle & Open Range.
"A photograph can show a physical image in which time is static, and a mirror can show a physical image in which time is dynamic, but I think what he saw on the mountain was another kind of image altogether which was not physical and did not exist in time at all. It was an image nevertheless and that is why he felt recognition." US Rt12 just after passing into Montana from North Dakota. After a morning f cool stormy dark clouds plus later rain, the sun finally came out. The clouds and pure blue sky caught my attention, so I wanted to stop for a photo. When I noticed the "cattle shoot" (loading ramp), I braked hard to a stop. This is an 8 picture panorama. Highway going off into the distance at the beginning of the panorama, is West, the ZMM Route direction of travel. As you "scroll" through this panorama your view will be all the way around the horizon, nearly full circle!! North is in direction of fantastic cloud formation.
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(Photo = 104-0474+7sc ...... ZMM Page = 075 ...... WayPt = 090x 2980ft)

From the I-94 Rest Area Just West of Miles City, MT You Can Get A Good View of the Yellowstone River. Notice That the Land Around Here, Despite the Fact This Is a Valley, Is Practically Flat. For this reason the River Flows Wide, Slow, and Muddy.
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You see five "blue-walls-with-a-roof". These mark the roofed picnic tables at this rest area. The roof is to keep off the sun and the rain, the blue walls are to stop bone chilling winds Spring and Fall. At first the panorama shows Northeast. Then the Rest Area Buildings are South. The dry low distant hills are West. As you "scroll" through this panorama your view will be all the way around the horizon, full circle, where the last part is back to Northeast again.
(Photo = 105-0535+7sc ...... ZMM Page = 092 ...... WayPt = 104x 2980ft)

Panorama of the Green Fertile Valley Along the Road Traveling West From Northeast Gate. Buffalo Herd Grazes On The Open Pasture-Like Grasslands.
“It seemed an enormous museum with exhibits carefully manicured to give the illusion of reality, but nicely chained off so that children would not injure them. People entered the park and became polite and cozy and fakey to each other because the atmosphere of the park made them that way. Route 212, NE corner of
Yellowstone National Park, WY. As the panorama opens you see the highway West. On the right of the highway you see a long low hill. This is probably a "glacial moraine" (pile of dirt) pushed ahead and deposited by an ancient glacier. The last Glacial Age was about 10,000 years ago, so of course the ice has long since melted. To see a male Buffalo Bull, scroll just beyond (1/2 pt). Where you will see it to right of the highway. To see the Buffalo Herd, you will have to keep scrolling (till 3/4 pt) where you see the river. Although the low lush grass is great for the buffalo, the grasslands somehow look as the product of a lawnmower!
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(Photo = 106-0677 +7sc ...... ZMM Page = 125 ...... WayPt = 160`|x|' 6605ft)