Tuesday August 7 2007

We started out today at 6:50 am Mountain Time from North Park Campground in Dickenson, ND. As we drove out of our campsite, I realized that I had forgotten to take a photo of the Creek there. Oh well, no big loss. The site was a nice long and wide site with weeds for a lawn. We could not put out our awning here because it is in a known high winds area. It appears that this North Park Campground is a newer campground located not far off of the freeway behind a Wal-mart. The information had said that the Wal-mart was within walking distance, but we couldn’t see it from the camper, so decided we would not try the walk. Only problem we had with the park was the skunk that decided to visit near to our trailer. We ended up getting up in the middle of the night to close everything up. Too bad because it was a lovely evening and nice to have the windows open.
The morning was 64*, calm, cloudy with some sun. Perfect for travel. We started out on I-90 and it wasn’t long until we were on I-94. This would be the road we would be on for most of our day of travel across North Dakota into Minnesota. At 7:30 MT - 8:30 CT we passed from Mountain time into Central time. There were huge fields of grain of all sorts along the road. Most of the fields were flat with hills at the edges of our view. There were a few fields of sunflowers, but more of corn and hay. I guess that the farmers have changed their fields over to corn for more profit than the sunflower. The last time we traveled through here, about 2001, the fields were filled with sunflowers everywhere you looked. Here’s a shot of a field of sunflowers that we passed.

The further east we drove, the greener the scenery got. When we started out, you never saw a lake or any water much. There was mostly grass lands with beef cattle and horse grazing. On the East side of North Dakota we were starting to see more crops and lakes along the road. In New Salem, North Dakota, there was a huge statue of a cow up on the hill that we took a picture of. We passed over the Missouri River where Lewis and Clark had traveled. We pulled off at Jamestown, ND to fill up at $2.99 per gallon for diesel fuel. There was a lot of construction on this turn off, so it was a bit of a challenge to get off and then back onto the freeway again. Around 1 pm Central Time it was now 79* as we passed over the Red River at the boarder of ND and MN. We arrived at 2:20 pm at Country Campground in Detroit Lakes, MN. Nice campground that we paid $12.50 a night full hook up + $2 for wifi with Passport America. We settled in for the night with the usual hook ups. We decided to change our reservations from two nights to three. Such a nice area. We plan to go into Detroit Lakes in the morning to take in the sights.
Happy Travels everyone!