So today would be our last day in Minnesota having had a couple of very nice weeks back in the state where we live together, and Patti still has family there. But our schedule draws us south and west.
After breakfast and loading up the car, we headed down the road. We realized how very far north we had been when we had to go quite a bit south in order to get to Morehead Minnesota. We drove 100 miles still in northern forests before turning west to Morehead.
Dick is always particularly interested in the changing landscape in our drives. We went from Northern forests to rich farmlands of eastern prairie to the more arid landscape of the western high prairie. We also had the opportunity to cross the Continental Divide twice, first in Minnesota and then in North Dakota. We usually think of this divide as separating the water that drains to either the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. Much of the border between Minnesota and North Dakota is defined by the Red River. It flows north; its water eventually reaches Hudson’s Bay. The divide here separates the water flowing to the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. Yes, we are far north.
We’re always on the lookout for wildlife. We were amused to watch many ravens lining the road for a goodly number of miles at the beginning of our trip. We also saw pairs of swans in a number of small lakes, and Dick even spotted some swan babies. So sweet! And while Patti napped, Dick pulled over and enjoyed seeing a large flock of white pelicans in one of the pothole ponds in North Dakota.
North Dakota has a special place in Patti’s heart because this is where she was born, and lived the first several years of her life. We drove through the city of Jamestown, which was the town that Patti was born in while her father coached a championship high school basketball team oh so many years ago. No time to visit Jamestown today, but we had a nice visit a few years back.
Today was another of the days where we needed to make some good progress and drove over five hundred miles, a quarter of the way home.
We made good time but about a half an hour away from our hotel, Dick noticed signs calling attention to the “Enchanted Highway."
Both of us were intrigued and we pulled off to see a giant metal sculpture of a flock of geese flying. This first sculpture is 90' tall and is certified by Guinness as the World's Largest Outdoor Sculpture. Well, we were hooked and Patti downloaded an app that helped explain what we were seeing. So we spent the next two hours driving 32 miles down and then back on this country highway with every few miles a stop with some amazing metal sculptures. These were created by a local man, Gary Geff, who felt that people should understand the importance of small towns in people and values in the countryside. He began a project over the last 20 years to make metal sculptures to draw people down this road, off of the interstate to the little town of Regent, where he still lives and works. We saw many other people checking out the sculptures, and especially followed a family with a couple elementary school boys who would give us a heads up on what’s coming up next. We stopped at a little gift shop in Regent and had a chance to talk to Geff, the sculptor himself.
So we spent the late afternoon looking at giant grasshoppers, a pheasant family, different kinds of fish that you could catch in North Dakota, a tin family, and a silhouette of Teddy Roosevelt riding again. In the little town at the end was the latest sculpture in process: a knight and dragon fighting. This was such a great example getting off the beaten path for an unexpected adventure. We love to both make great plans but also be flexible when we can be to catch some interesting, unexpected experiences.
After the enchanted detour, we arrived at our hotel in Dickinson North Dakota, on the edge of North Dakota and Montana.
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