After leaving the Twin Cities on Tuesday morning, it was a three hour drive to the northwest on I-94 to reach the Red River, which serves as the border between the town of Moorhead, MN and the metropolis of Fargo, ND. I pulled off I-94 and toured around downtown Fargo. I found a surprisingly hip looking restaurant on the ground floor of the Hotel Donaldson. I had a surprisingly good burger.
My home away from home in North Dakota
It is 350 miles across the length of the state of North Dakota and I cruised along for an entire afternoon (listening to The Bourne Legacy) until I reached Dickinson, ND which lies approximately 70 miles east of the North Dakota/Montana border.
Beautiful amber waves of grain
About 10 miles west of Dickinson, lies a road called The Enchanted Highway. Along this 30 mile stretch of road, residents have constructed huge sculptures. Here are two that I saw:
Flying Gulls
Jumping Deer
These are HUGE sculptures. I was so sick of driving at that point that I now regret not driving down the 30 miles to see the other four sculptures.
After a good night's sleep, I headed west to see tour the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
When Roosevelt was in his early 20's, a NYC guy, he spent a couple summers here in Western North Dakota hunting and living. He actually started up a business here as well. Over the course of his lifetime, he saw the bison that he hunted become nearly extinct. He saw that the place he loved slowly change and it was this that instilled in him the sense of resource conservation that lead Roosevelt to establish our National Park system. This area of the North Dakota Badlands was set aside as a reserve in 1946 and eventually was turned into a National Park in 1978. Here is a little of what Roosevelt saw:
Roosevelt's beloved bison
Prairie dogs
A thriving praire dog metropolis
Most people travel THROUGH North Dakota. Even though I didn't spend a great deal of time here, I did experience a bit of the amazing sense of space that draws and keeps people here. To give you a sense of how wide open it is, the entire state has 630,000 residents. San Francisco, the city, has 760,000 residents in its 49 square miles.
It is 350 miles across the length of the state of North Dakota and I cruised along for an entire afternoon (listening to The Bourne Legacy) until I reached Dickinson, ND which lies approximately 70 miles east of the North Dakota/Montana border.
About 10 miles west of Dickinson, lies a road called The Enchanted Highway. Along this 30 mile stretch of road, residents have constructed huge sculptures. Here are two that I saw:
These are HUGE sculptures. I was so sick of driving at that point that I now regret not driving down the 30 miles to see the other four sculptures.
After a good night's sleep, I headed west to see tour the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
When Roosevelt was in his early 20's, a NYC guy, he spent a couple summers here in Western North Dakota hunting and living. He actually started up a business here as well. Over the course of his lifetime, he saw the bison that he hunted become nearly extinct. He saw that the place he loved slowly change and it was this that instilled in him the sense of resource conservation that lead Roosevelt to establish our National Park system. This area of the North Dakota Badlands was set aside as a reserve in 1946 and eventually was turned into a National Park in 1978. Here is a little of what Roosevelt saw:
Most people travel THROUGH North Dakota. Even though I didn't spend a great deal of time here, I did experience a bit of the amazing sense of space that draws and keeps people here. To give you a sense of how wide open it is, the entire state has 630,000 residents. San Francisco, the city, has 760,000 residents in its 49 square miles.
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