Minot

 6-3-2021 - Thursday

Today we did the western part of the Turtle Mountain Scenic Drive, which took us around Lake Metigoshe.  Pretty lake, lined with lots of lake homes.  For once, we stayed on the main road, so this little side trip didn't take long.  

Next up, we dumbed onto our next point of interest, "Mystical Horizons."  The sign on the highway just said Point of Interest.  We had seen this in a magazine and we could easily have missed it because we weren't really looking for it.  It's designated as the 21 Century Stonehenge.  Besides the stones, it has a sundial and a Polaris sighting tube, aimed at the North Star (unfortunately, Joe couldn't find it in the daylight).

We are still on Turtle Mountain here, and there is a nice view of the valley below from this spot.

Our next area of interest was the J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge.  We stopped at the Refuge's Office and Visitor Center, but it wasn't open.  They did have brochures available on the outside, so we got a map and started out.  It's a 22-mile auto tour Scenic Trail.  It's also a Grassland Trail and a Souris River Canoe Trail, but the water is so low here that it would be difficult to canoe. This is mostly a refuge for birds and waterfowl, and it a really marshy area with the Souris River running through it.  It is 58,700 acres and extends south from the Canadian border for approximately 45 miles.  We aren't really into birds and can identify very few, but we were hoping to see grouse or pheasant.  We didn't.  We did see a heron (we think), some turtles from the bridges, and a deer running across the field.

Heron?

Ducks

Baby turtles swimming

Bigger turtle

There are 6, I think, dams on this river.  We walked over to one, rough walking on these small boulders.  You can fish this river, but we didn't see any fishermen.

The dragon flies were out in full force this morning, and our windshield shows it.  We surely depleted their population.  As soon as we hit town, Joe was looking for a car wash.

We completed this drive and headed to Minot.  Collins was stationed here in 1968 at the Air Force base, and Minot, North Dakota occasionally comes up in conversations, so we thought we should check it out.  I imagine it has grown a lot since then.  We had a very good Mexican lunch at Paradiso's, shopped a little at Walmart, found a car wash again, and drove past the Air Force base on our way out of town.  

 

We had seen this building (church?) a block or so over, so we circled around to check it out.  It turned out to be a Visionary Terrace, maybe Scandinavian. And this other "statue" was right outside this building, I'm not at all sure what that represents.
 

We had seen a roadside decoration on our way this morning, and we happened to come back part of the same road and were able to get pictures.  I know my friend Barbara will want this for her front yard!

Just past this, but on the same property, were a moose and Sasquatch.

Our last item of interest on this Scenic Drive was Tommy the Turtle, this area's local mascot.  It is the world's largest snowmobile riding turtle at 26 feet tall (who knew?).

On the way back to the RV, we drove a little bit of the entrance of the Peace Gardens.  We could see progress was being made.

We got back to camp about 5:00, earlier than we expected, since we drove 275 miles today.  We thought we were going to get out of North Dakota tomorrow, but we decided to spend a couple days at Devil's Lake, so we have a short drive ahead of us (90 miles I think).  It was really hot here today (97), felt like Arizona.  I hope this heat wave doesn't last very long.