Touring, Cooking, Playing, Working

This is Jenny’s new grocery store in Tioga.  It’s outstanding.  It’s huge.  It has everything.  No longer do people have to drive to Williston or Minot to do their big grocery shopping.

This empty lot along the highway through Tioga belongs to Chris and Jenny.  It’s where Chris has plans to build a premium automatic carwash.  It’ll be the only carwash for miles and miles, and also the best one.  Jenny chose the colors and signage and Chris is completing the plans.

Tioga now has big attractive apartments for workers and employees of the new businesses in town.

New condominiums have popped up everywhere, along with many new single family homes in the area.

Man camps are still an important and necessary part of being able to man the work in the oil fields.

Just a mile down the section line from Jenny’s place is a new Shopko store where area residents can buy name brand clothes and shoes along with all kinds of other necessities.

We decided to fill a big pink tub for Addie and Gunnar to cool off in while the men worked on the deck. Guess who thought the tub was for him.  (On another day we also went to the new pool in Tioga.)

After a day on Lake Sakakawea, Chris and Allan got to work putting a new railing on the deck.

Goliath has his own pool.

I like to play games with the kids like Scrabble and Mancala and Sequence.  Time to do chess again.

Look, Mom, a razor..

Look, Mom, no hands.

And a golf cart.  Nobody has more fun.

Gunnar also has fun in the neighbor’s wheat field.

He cuts as many stalks as the pail will hold, and he first got permission from the farmer, who also gave him rides on the combine last year.

Then he crushes and thrashes the wheat by hand, and lets the wind blow away the chaff, picking out by hand what the wind didn’t.  Gunnar ended up with a whole pint of clean wheat, and then he and Addie worked together and got another pint of clean wheat. 

Jenny plays Catch a Doggie Treat with Goliath. 

This was the last railing the men got done while we were there.  Next comes the hand rails on both sides of both levels of steps, and then the solar light caps for on top of the posts.

As you can see, it wasn’t all work and no play.

As we were saying goodbye, it started to rain and then it hailed.  Addie ran out to pick up a piece of hail.

Jenny shows that it’s almost golf ball size hail.

Seven years ago, when the kids moved to Tioga, we’d only see one oil well here and there.  Now they’ve planted more pumps next to each other on the sites.

Jenny explained  that initially it was important to make the claims and acquire the sites.  Now they can add more pumps as they’d like.

We always get to see a lot of trains when we’re out west.

We had sunny skies when we got to Jamestown, where we spent a night before finishing the trek to Victoria on Monday, July 27th.

Sure was fun.  Thank you, Jenny, Chris, Addie, and Gunnar, for everything.  Love you.

Email:  Sue@PrintsPublishing.com

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