It might have been worse : $b a motor trip from coast to coastMassey, Beatrice Larned
General
It might have been worse : $b a motor trip from coast to coast
Massey, Beatrice Larned
Automobile travel; United States -- Description and travel
Still another pleasure was in store for us--we were to play golf and
dine at the Town and City Club. The club is situated between the two
cities, near the banks of the Mississippi River. We drove past before
we realized that it was not a private estate. Stopping a young man,
we asked where the club was. “Got me stuck, Missis; never heard of
it.” A small boy of seven came up, and, with a withering glance which
took us all in, waved his arm, saying, “Right before your eyes!” We
drove through lovely grounds to the club-house. Such gorgeous old
trees!--hedges that made you think of Devonshire, lawns like velvet,
and a riot of color in the beds and borders--every flowering shrub
and plant you could dream of. Of course, the links were fine, and the
twilight lasted until nearly nine o’clock. We had ordered dinner in
advance; so by a quarter to nine we were seated at our table, with
faultless appointments, enjoying such a good dinner, and watching
the sky-line of Minneapolis, with its church spires and towering
buildings, fade in the afterglow of the sunset. Not one of us spoke as
the twilight deepened and the stars came out; we went out on the lawn
and saw the new harvest moon through the trees--a bit of Nature’s
fairyland, the memory of which will always stay with us.
Here we left the Yellowstone Trail and followed the National Parks
Highway north to Fargo, North Dakota, 265 miles; winding in and out
over good roads through a myriad of lakes--ten thousand, we were
told--in Minnesota. Every mile of the way, as far as the eye could see,
were acres of potatoes, corn, and wheat, fertile and green. If you
want to visualize Frank Norris’s books and understand how we can feed
starving Europe, motor through this state. It was harvest-time. Great
tractors were snorting like live creatures, hundreds of men on the big
ranches were “bringing in the sheaves,” the country was alive with
action, and the world was to reap the benefit of the toil and endless
energy of these sturdy men. You have never _seen_ our country until
you have traveled through this great grain-belt. Every small town had
two or three grain elevators. There were beautiful fields of alfalfa,
a mass of bloom with its bluish purple flower as sweet as honey. As we
came near these fields, the air was always cool. We couldn’t account
for it; but it is a strange fact that the air is considerably cooler
when you near an alfalfa field. Can you see the picture? Lakes on every
side, as blue as great sapphires, sparkling in the sun, the road lined
with the wild sunflowers, often forming a golden hedge on either side
for miles, the blue mass of color of the alfalfa fields, and above it
the green corn and golden wheat. The magpies were in flocks, and the
sea-gulls were skimming over the inland lakes, hundreds of miles from
any large body of water, and hundreds more of them were resting on the
shores. Strange, was it not? Through the West we have noted the absence
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