North Dakota continued

We woke up to rain. And since it was raining, we kept rolling over and over because no one wants to get up and pee in the rain. Eventually we had to get up and by that time it was only drizzling. We walked to the bathroom and on the way back to talk to a grizzled man we had admired the day before because of his ancient Victory motorcycle. That and his amazing white facial hair. :) He was retired and liked to travel to national parks. He was staying in for the day, but we had to go. The funny thing is that once we walked back to our campsite to pack up the tent, it started to rain again... so I had to pack up a wet tent in the rain. Boo :( Of course on the way out of the park, we got stuck in one more bison traffic jam in the rain. They are still so super awesome.

We had to head back south, but the question was through the mud in what North Dakota (and many of these western states count as road construction, or on the longer detour. Because it had been raining, we decided on the detour through the scenic byway. It was pretty despite the rain and my paranoia (thanks Kelley) about driving through the res. Our first real stop for the morning was Perkins for breakfast - about 2 hours after we got up, maybe more. Then to the Dickinson Dinosaur museum that was pretty much next door. Though this museum is highly rated (something like 75% of its exhibits are real - as opposed to casts and replicas), it wasn't the best dinosaur museum I have been too. Over half the museum was really cool rocks and minerals which Aaron probably enjoyed more than the dinos and some of them were very interesting. So it wasn't a disappointment, but there was not a whole lot of dinosaurs.

We drove south out of town so we could cut over and come north up the Enchanted Highway. It wasn't raining anymore, but the wind was blowing and it was really chilly. This is a highway through farms and corn fields that has like seven GIANT statues welded together from odds and ends. Apparently the community gets together and plans these and works on them together. They were really HUGE and really awesome. It was totally worth a drive out of the way and stopping at almost all of them to take a photo. It is hard for me to pick a favorite because many of them were really cool. Aaron posted a few pics of them and this one is my favorite of him. I guess my favorite was the tin family, but for some reason I really liked the pheasants.

Then it was drive drive drive across North Dakota. Aaron drove and I worked on a paper for a while or napped. Staring at a computer in the moving car gives me a headache which then puts me to sleep. We only had two stops really. The first was to Salem Sue a giant holstein cow, probably the world's largest cow, and the second was to the world's largest buffalo. The buffalo statue was in a little preserved historic town and next to a buffalo museum that housed three albino buffalo (very sacred to the natives and extremely rare). The museum was closed and the buffalo were hiding, but the walk around the little town was interesting. I liked the dentist office - I am so glad that I have access to modern medicine. They also had a little writer's shack that used to be home to Louis L'Amour. I'm not sure if I have read any of his bazillions of western novels, but I know my dad has and he really likes them. By the time we left, we were able to spot one of the white buffalo on a distant hill (but really it was bison shmison because we had seen so many bison previously at much closer distances (ps bison = buffalo)).

Our goal for the evening was Fargo, North Dakota to couchsurf with Justin and Ashley. Justin is in a band and had a show that evening, so they were not home when we arrived well after dark. We commandeered the loft and hit the sack. The funny thing is there cat joined us in the night - how on earth did the cat learn to climb a ladder? And also how to climb down?

We spent most of the morning hanging out with Justin and Ashley and talking about random stuff. They made us waffles and we helped them with gardening questions. They had a family thing in the afternoon, so they left us with directions to a cool bar and suggestions for around town. There are no microbreweries in North Dakota that we could find -so our one per state streak was broken. The bar we went to was J&L's and was no wider than my living room - the building was built between 2 existing buildings - and though they did not brew their own beer, they stocked a lot of microbrews from the surrounding states on tap, so it sort of counts. I think there were 40 beers on tap? I had a Moose Drool brewed in Montana and an oatmeal stout brewed by Summit in Colorado and maybe something else. Aaron drank a plethora of cheap beer in cans, some of it locally brewed as well. I am sure the waitress thought we were an odd pair.

We walked around the town for a bit and did the walking tour for about fifteen minutes - after that we just walked around. The walking tour focused on the minute architectural details of almost every building in town and quickly got boring. We still walked around – I just stopped looking at the brochure. Eventually we headed home to sleep to get ready for our big day of driving across Minnesota and Wisconsin.