Tuesday, August 9, 2022 (Day 22)Busy travel & adventure day!🥳Happy 48th Birthday to my dearest friend Shane! 🎈

First night we slept with all the windows open! Brrrr 🥶 61* at 7am. Made a good traveling day breakfast….egg cups, avocado, coffee & tea. Amazing how beautiful and peaceful the morning is and we had a few rabbits sitting next to the camper that treated us this morning. 🐇 8:40am left the campground. Stopped to say good morning to some cows along the road and to see if there were any soybeans ready to pick but nope. Crossed over the Continental Divide. First stop is Jamestown which is the heart of North Dakota’s Prairie and the hometown of author Louis L’Amour & The worlds largest Buffalo! Dakota Thunder stands 26ft tall, 60 ton concrete that has been there since 1959! Enjoyed walking through the old town and talking to the local volunteers.

Next stop…..yup McDonald’s! Ahhhh that Diet Coke! 🥤 As we travel towards Bismarck it’s just so beautiful all the fields of sunflowers 🌻 for as far as you can see. Rolling hills of them! Breathtaking!

Bismarck is the capital of North Dakota & is the 2nd most populated city after Fargo. Population in 2020 of about 73,622. Bismarck was founded by European-Americans in 1872 on the east bank of the Missouri River. It has been North Dakota’s capital city since 1889 when the state was created from the Dakota Territory and admitted to the Union.Bismarck is across the river from Mandan, named after a historic Native American tribe of the area. We could see the 19 story state capital building from a distance and it’s one of only 4 tower style capitals in the US.

We stopped at Costco to fuel up! The truck was thirsty…94.35 gallons later for a grand total of $401.84!! 🧐 Interesting fact about Costco, their liquor store is a private store within the store! It was a chain linked fenced area back by the produce. ND laws say the have to be free standing, even to purchase beer & wine! Learned something new!

Next adventure was the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center in Washburn- visited visitor center and learned about the first farmers, particularly women of the Mandan & Hidatsa nations. As we left the area we crossed over the Missouri River.

🐄🐄🐄Along the highway we saw the worlds largest holstein cow 🐄 in New Salem, built to honor the dairy producers. She’s called Salem Sue, 38ft tall & 50ft long! You can’t miss her! 😱🤣

⛺️ 2:50pm arrived at Knife River Indian Villages National Historical Site in Stanton. Here we watched a movie which talked about the heritage of 3 Hidatsa villages. Sakakawea lived there before joining Lewis & Clark on their expedition. We took the trail to the Earthlodge village and the reconstructed earthlodge that had the inside all set up. To enter there was a large Buffalo skin hanging in the doorway. I was surprised how heavy it was to move it to the side to enter. The Hidatsa and Mandan, grew much of their food and hunted bison & other game animals.

Passed The Enchanted Highway is 32 miles lined with metal sculptures starting with “ Geese in Flight” which we saw from I-94. This sculpture was named the world’s largest scrap metal by Guinness Book of World Records!

5:30pm arrived in Dickinson,ND at North Park Campground for one night! It’s a shaded pull-thru site. Good for the night! 309.1 miles today. It’s leftovers for dinner. Our neighbors George & Rose came over and visited till the cold weather sent us all in for the night!