The Park Drought is Over!

I know I say this a lot, but we had so much fun today!  There's a lot to cover, so I'm just going to get right to it.  We started the day at the Geographical Center of North America in Rugby, ND.  This was a fun little photo op and we think it's cool to say we've been in the center of the entire continent!

Next we saw the Tommy the Turtle statue which is the world's tallest turtle riding the world's largest snowmobile in Bottineau, ND.  Again, another fun little stop to stretch our legs.

I'm in the picture for perspective.

The next stop was initially unplanned, but came as a recommendation from one of Steve's co-workers.  We stopped at the Scandinavian Heritage Park in Minot, ND.  This is a really cute park to walk through and the stave church in the park is stunning!

Hans Christian Andersen statue

Stave Church

The doorway to the church - I loved all the woodwork detail!

Dala Horse - I'm in the picture for perspective

We enjoyed a picnic lunch at Fort Mandan State Recreation Area where we walked through a replica of Fort Mandan - where the Corps of Discovery (Lewis & Clark) camped through the winter.  Fun side note:  I highly recommend watching the Nashville episode of Drunk History to learn the story behind Lewis & Clark.  Steve and I kept giving ourselves a chuckle by quoting lines from the episode while we were there.  :-)  One thing Drunk History didn't tell us is that Lewis also took his Newfoundland on the trek with him and the park has a statue for Seaman the Newfie.

Fort Mandan

Lewis & Clark's room at the fort

Missouri River

We bought 12 sodas at the candy store yesterday, here's the second one we tried.  It just tasted like "red."

Seaman the Newfie

Our next stop was our first NPS site in 11 months.  It felt so good to be back in a park and getting our stamp!  At Knife River Indian Villages National Historical Site, we toured a replica earthlodge then hiked out to the remains of the Knife River village, which was just mounds of grass where the earthlodges once stood.  We also walked out to the Knife River for a scenic overlook.

Replica earthlodge

Knife River Village Remains (the hills are where Earth Lodges once stood)

Knife River

Us at Knife River

We continued our drive through New Salem, ND where we met Salem Sue - the world's largest Holstein cow.  She is a big girl!  She's also on top of a hill, so we got to take in a nice view of what felt like the entire state of North Dakota!

After Salem Sue, we had a 30+ mile drive along Enchanted Highway.  The story behind this is a school principal was worried for his town and had an "if you build it, they will come" epiphany.  He had no artistic/welding experience, but decided to build these massive scrap-metal sculptures along the highway to encourage people to stop in the town.  It started off as 7 sculptures, but there are 8, with a 9th in progress.  This was so cool to see and gave us a fun experience out of what would have been a pretty boring drive through North Dakota farmland.

Geese in Flight

Deer Crossing

Grasshoppers in the Field (note our CRV in the background for size perspective)

Fisherman's Dream

Pheasants on the Prairie

Teddy Rides Again

Tin Family

Whirly Gigs - this one had a button you could push and some of the things moved around

This one is in progress (knight and dragon)

On our way to our hotel in Medora, ND (which is an ADORABLE little town, by the way), we caught our first glimpse of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  Not gonna lie, I had some pretty low expectations of this park because the pictures for it always look kind of "blah."  Boy was I wrong!  I know my pictures won't do it justice, and these are also cell phone photos so they definitely don't help.  But our first glimpse of this park - the Painted Canyon - was breathtaking.  It's like Badlands National Park on some killer steroids.  When we went to Badlands, that was my first "out west" experience and I was in total shock at how vast and different the landscape was compared to home.  I'm really glad I went to Badlands first because I loved it there and it's a great park.  But TRNP takes it to a new level!  I really can't wait to see what else this park has to offer (including bison and wild horses - fingers crossed we see those!).  We are here for the next three and a half days, and we're hitting both the North and South unit.  We have plenty of hikes planned and we will be doing as much of the scenic drives as we can (some construction will cut some of those short).

We ended the evening in our hotel with another fun soda and COVID-style beers in small glasses.  Tonight's featured beers were Hopper Trail IPA from Copper Trail in Alexandria, MN and Fargo Brewing Company's Oktoberfest.  I preferred last night's Oktoberfest, but still a tasty beverage!