Up until now, we were covering the Eastern part of the United States. We left Wisconsin on the 15th of June and began our journey to the Big Sky State, Montana. This is our first stop in venturing to the Western part of the United States.
We were in Northern Wisconsin and our destination was the Eastern Side of Montana. Our route took us up along the edge of Lake Superior, through Duluth, Minnesota and dropped us in Fargo, North Dakota for the evening.
I don’t know how many of you have seen the movie Fargo, but there is a wood chipper in the movie that became famous. Well, the first thing we did when we got into Fargo was to go to the Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitors Bureau located at 2001 44th St. S., Fargo, ND. You take exit 348 off of I-94. Just inside the main building you will see the wood chipper and movie memorabilia.
In addition, outside, you will find the Fargo Walk of Fame. This was created by a local business man by the name of Mike Stevens and features such a wide variety of people like Garth Brooks, Metallica, Governor Jesse Ventura, George W Bush, Jimmy “J.J.” Walker and even Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street. It stretches along a stretch of grass outside of the Visitors Bureau.
The second thing we had to do while in Fargo, was to visit a high school friend of mine (Freeda). She was located in Fargo and I had not seen her in decades. So, me, Mama Nomad and the boys met her and her boys at a nearby restaurant for some Sicilian Fire Sticks, Pasta and a lot of conversation. What a great time. And Freeda had not changed a bit!
We got up early the next morning and headed on Westward. Our path took us straight through the Capitol of North Dakota, Bismarck. This will go down in history as the Capitol with the least traffic we have ever encountered for a State Capitol.
Continuing Westward, we saw a huge Buffalo from the road. This was not your average buffalo. It was the world’s largest. They called it Dakota Thunder and it stood at over at over 26 feet tall, 46 feet long and weighs over 60 tons. That is one big buffalo. So, we, of course, had to pull over and check it out. It was located in Jamestown, North Dakota just off of I-94. They have an entire little frontier town there along with a National Buffalo Museum. In addition they had some entertaining little goats there as well as an actual herd of buffalo. This included two of them which were albino.
After taking in all the buffalo that we came to see, we continued on westward down I-94 until we saw some badlands. Then we realized we were at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Mama Nomad had seen Dakota Badlands when she was a young girl, but the rest of us hadn’t. It is a whole different type of beautiful.
We pulled over and stood there for a considerable amount of time just checking out the landscape. Ethan had a monocular handy and we took turns looking through it. We found different formations, a cave and even one grazing buffalo down in the valley. If you stop off here, be aware, the buffalo can and do come up into the area where the cars are (as evidenced by piles of buffalo poop in the grass).
Finally, we got back in Ebony and kept her on the road until we hit our destination in Montana. We have pulled over to see things. But, I do not ever recall pulling over so many times to check out so many things. The journey to our new home base is commonly just a trip. This one was actually an adventure and I look forward to what lays in front of us out west. Safe Travels.
