I spotted the name of the well after I made the turn.

I knew some wells were named descriptively.

Pickings were slim for turning around, you could go for miles and not know where you might end up or if the road would even last or funner yet, dwindle into nothing.

Ah-ha! I spotted a well. It wasn’t the right well, but it was a turnaround option…

“Extreme II? Oh *&#^.”

Working in the oil field was…leaving the relative roominess of the Interstate, crawling on back-roads doing absolutely crazy things with tractor-trailers. 18WD anyone? I never had so much fun.

In the Bakken (Wheelock) fields, if you got lost, at least there was little traffic – you could turn around anywhere. Well, anywhere you could get a mammoth truck maneuvered into.

Dispatch would give us the wrong directions; we’d bounce down little rough cow paths like bobble-head dolls searching for the elusive oil wells we were sent to find, so we got to practice random turn-around skills more often than not.

(I say ‘us’ in the context of myself and the other drivers out there. I operated solo.)

It was a gumbo mess frequently, with unheard of rain totals that year and flooding in Minot.

Flooded Minot KOA campground.

It was before the ND oil patch became known for being rough or violent. I never had a worry then but I would not go back today.

I was in search of a ‘pit water’ well site.

This is dirty water in a pond-type setting (a pit), usually pumped onto our waiting tankers through a filter set up on a trailer by the pit. We’d load and haul this water to a disposal site.

John the dispatcher had apparently thoughtfully held the map upside down providing directions on this one. I was in the middle of literal nowhere, and nothing was matching up to where I was supposed to be. I sighed. I had to turn around.

John once even insisted there was a road where there wasn’t one. I had to send him a picture to prove the road wasn’t there!

Here’s that picture. This is *not* 185th Street, John!

I came around the corner, saw the sign for “Extreme II” and down a hill and into the driveway I spun/sunk & slid, red mud flying.

There was no way I dared let off the accelerator; you stop, you’re done. The lack of ruts told me no one had been in there for days. A few Hail Marys later (and I’m not even Catholic), I got turned around and back out of that well entrance and back up the hill. I didn’t know you could drift a truck like that. I got out and I swear the tractor was grinning. I know I was once I got safely clear.

I found out later John had sent everybody every-which way on that load; I was the only one to have done “Extreme II” for a turnaround!