Road trip - North Dakota

 

North Dakota surprised me. I had a weird misconception that the moment we crossed the border from Montana the land would iron out and there wouldn’t be a hill in site.  Not true. The northwest section of ND is quite hilly and green.  It was so beautiful.

Our first stop in North Dakota was a little historic town called Medora.  Teddy Roosevelt spent a couple of years here before his presidency, and that’s still the small town’s main claim to fame.  The town was suuuper cute, and the brochure we picked up boasted that it is the #1 vacation spot in the state. After taking a little time to walk through the reasonably priced shops and adorable ice cream and fudge shop, we were on our way.

Shortly after Medora we pulled off the road to a look-out/rest area where we saw sedimentary hills that were formed into sharp-ish peaks. The landscape was absolutely beautiful. Next up was the town of Dickinson, where my good friend from college, Suzie Kay, grew up.  It’s a really small town, but is currently growing majorly because of new opportunities in oil. The town reminded me a lot of where I went to university in Ellensburg. We stayed with Suzie’s parents, Ray and Mary Pat.

Our hosts took us out to a nice steak dinner at Elk’s and told us all about Dickinson and the growing oil industry. Due to new technologies making it possible for oil companies to drill horizontally, as well as vertically, the Northwest section of North Dakota is now a major oil area. The little town of Dickinson, ND is bustling with new growth and traffic.  Some people are okay with this, because they are making big bucks if their land is on a well and they have the rights to the minerals, but some others are just not happy about their little town changing.

It was really nice to sleep in a bed after two nights of camping, and to have a hot shower. In the morning I got up early to take Soph on a little jog.  We ran around Dickinson State University, which educates about 2,000 students at any given time. After my little run, we sat with Mary Pat in the kitchen while she made us breakfast. After many hugs and saying goodbye, we made our way southeast to check out the Enchanted Highway.

The Enchanted Highway is a 32 mile stretch of highway where there are large metal sculptures along the road. There are Geese in Flight (which we didn’t get a chance to see), running pheasants, frolicking deer and others. Go ND, way to be awesome!!