Posted by: Onaxthiel: The morning came suddenly, as if god had suddenly turned the lights on outside the bags. We crawled out, still shivering, to witness an odd set of sights. A lone buffalo grazed on our butte. The valleys around us were filled with morning mist. On the southern horizon, a host of hot air balloons rose slowly into the sky. The Medora balloon launch was underway. We snapped photos of all this while waiting for our bags to dry off from the morning dew. BOB (Obfuscator adds: BOB stands for big orange ball, a gigantic nuclear furnace, a de-rangers [View Full Entry]

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Posted by: Onaxthiel: We waited for the morning drizzle to pass before we went back to the south unit of Teddy Roosevelt national park. Instead of the cute, helpful ranger we had the first day, we had a young lady who projected an antipathy one step short of hostility towards us when we asked for a backcountry camping permit. I am not sure if this was because she didn’t think we were capable of hiking our planned route after a hard rain or if she just had a bad morning. Once she had our paperwork, we were off on the drive [View Full Entry]

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Obfuscator writes: Shadehill State Park in South Dakota wasn’t too bad. It had a nice lake that we were right next to, and some good sunset and morning views. It wasn’t too special though, so we didn’t stay long in the morning. Since we were in the north-western part of South Dakota, we decided to make a little detour to see the site of the Battle of Slim Buttes (approx.), which is near Reva, South Dakota. On the way we got sidetracked into stopping in Bison, SD, which advertised itself as having a Sod House and Museum. We were unable to [View Full Entry]

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Obfuscator writes: We left Lake Sakakawea State Park promptly in the morning, except for once again spending some time trying to dry our stuff out. That had to be cut a bit short though, as we were running in front of what we thought was a storm front. We drove into the nearest town, which was very small, and called Pick City. There we found the “Best dam bar by a dam site,” which we declined to visit. It was 9:00 AM, which is a little early to start, even for me. We drove along the Missouri, and along the way, [View Full Entry]

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Obfuscator writes: We departed Graham’s Island after drying our stuff out for a bit again. On our way out of the park, we stopped to look at a strange bird. The next time we saw such a bird, things would be very different indeed. Our first destination was Maddock, ND, a small (and I mean very small) town not too far from Devil’s Lake. At Maddock, following our Uncle’s directions, we found the grave of our Great Great Grandfather (on our mother’s side) (approx. 47° 56.896N, 099° 31.946W). His North Dakota wife lived to be 97, which I found rather surprising. [View Full Entry]

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Day 10 - Obfuscator writes: Maybe I’m allergic to North Dakota. Waking up even near North Dakota (in our campsite in East Grand Forks, MN) my eyes were puffy and itchy, and that just sort of spread more as the day went on. Honestly, at this point (Day 11) I’m hoping that it’s just allergies and not something more awful. (Onaxthiel adds: I’ve got him on allergy meds. We’ll see if they help.) It rained on us again last night, which wasn’t too much fun, but again, we were fairly lucky. The rains, though longer than the night before, were still [View Full Entry]

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On my way to the International Peace Garden this morning, I stopped off at Dunseith, ND which is the nearest town to the Garden. Passed by a really big turtle. A really, big turtle. According to the Dakota Day Trips book, the turtle is about 18 feet high and forty feet long. It is made of over 2,000 tire rims. At Christmas time, it dons a Santa hat :) according to the book which would be quite a sight. The artist created the turtle after collecting tire rims for about 20 years. It's apparently the world's largest turtle although Guiness has [View Full Entry]

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Rugby was another stop on my way to the International Peace Garden. A stone monument in Rugby, North Dakota marks the geographical center of North America (the world's fourth largest continent). The location was marked in January 1931 by a US Geological Survey. A clever mileage chart tells you how far away Mexico and some other locations are. Also located in Rugby is the Northern Lights Tower. According to the Dakota Day Trips book, the Tower is about 90 feet tall and depicts the four stages of the Aurora Borealis (Northern lights). It has multiple colors reflecting the lights one see [View Full Entry]

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Despite living in North Dakota most of my life, I'm ashamed to admit that I have never before been to the International Peace Garden. Decided to finally take care of that. The Garden is located on the US-Canadian border with an equal half on both sides. 2007 is its 75th Anniversary having been dedicated in 1932. Construction on the Garden actually started in 1934 and was built primarily by the Civilian Conservation Corps of the United States. According to a brochure provided, the workers continued working at the site until the calling of World War II. The Garden is almost 2,400 [View Full Entry]

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I was travelling on Hwy 85 through North and South Dakota and had reserved my campsite in Medora because there simply wasn’t another campground on Hwy 85 for miles. I had originally planned to stay one night, but about 50 miles away the scenery started to change and when I turned onto Interstate 94 heading for Medora the view from the scenic overlook changed my stay from one to two nights in a hurry. Medora is most unusual. General George Custer stayed here in 1876 on his way to Little Bighorn, All of the sidewalks in the downtown are wooden and [View Full Entry]

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