We planned to stay a couple of nights in Watford City, go visit Theodore Roosevelt Nat’l Park. But as we got closer to the city, we were seeing oil rigs, and tanker after tanker on the highway and going & coming from the side roads. Also started seeing what looked like temporary RV parks everywhere. Downtown was BUSY, late afternoon, & yes, you guessed it, NO room at the RV park or the city park. 
So another 50 miles to Williston. Early evening, raining, road construction, mud, trucks of ALL kinds! Fortunately, Prairie Acres RV Park reserves half their sites for travelers, we got the LAST one. Truck & trailer had changed colors because of the reddish brown mud.
The highway is a steady stream of trucks; asphalt, gravel, dirt, tankers, equipment haulers, you name it. Streets are lined with trucks parked on both sides, local commented, “if it has a sleeper, the driver is probably living in it”. We’ve heard comments such as, “Williston is the only city in the US that is hiring homeless people”, “17,000 jobs available, but you need to find your own housing, and there isn’t any”.
While visiting the Roosevelt Nat’l Park yesterday, got talking to a couple from Minnesota, he is a road contractor. He doesn’t have any idea how they got the oil rig there, but he has been asked to cut a road to a rig 13 miles from the nearest highway. The road needs to be able to handle loaded oil tankers. We have also seen several pipe lines being laid along the roads & coming across the fields. The terrain here is very rolling & hilly.
As we came into Williston, we crossed the Missouri River, normally 200 yards wide, now over 3 miles wide. The bridge in the foreground is where the river channel is, the rest is usually dry land! It is currently at its’ all time highest level! And the snow in Yellowstone & Montana is not melted yet, and it rained again since we got here! And FEMA is rejecting ND’s request for help.
