On the Sunday night of Labor Day weekend, we were able to reserve a spot at Icelandic State Park in the northeast part of the state just outside of the small town of Cavalier, pretty close to the Canadian border. That night the campground was almost completely full. The next night we were 1 of 10 campers staying in the 153 camp sites. We planned on staying here for 4 nights, but life intervened and we stayed here for a full week. Let’s get acclimated to this area before we start exploring.
We’ll spend a fair amount of time in this museum in a future post since it is so informative about this area. The state did a great job putting displays together.
countryside
As we drove north toward Cavalier, we saw some fun sights that we thought you’d enjoy.
First: Before we started this trip, people had told us about fields of sunflowers in North Dakota, but we didn’t start seeing them until we started driving north.
I would have thought the faces of the sunflowers would be up looking toward the sun, but they were facing downward. All I can think is that the flowers are about ready to harvest, and their faces are heavy. The flowers are used for sunflower oil, not sunflower seeds. Once we started seeing these fields, they were everywhere.
Second: In almost every town and community, grain storage facilities filled the horizon. They’re everywhere.
Third: Grain silos are on every farm that we passed.
campground
oops!
After an outing to Pembina a couple of miles from the Canadian border, we went to a small town for lunch before going on a hike. As I stood up from the table, I got twisted, lost my balance, and took a fall.
They didn’t see any breaks in my foot on the x-rays they took, so Dr. Sumra wanted me to have an MRI for a different look. But . . . the MRI technician wasn’t going to be back in town for another week. Oh no. The next morning Rachelle called to see how I was doing (so nice of her!), and we talked to her and Dr. Sumra about going to a specialist in Grand Forks, the largest big city in the area. Rachelle was able to get me an appointment with a podiatrist for the next morning at 8:00 a.m.
Grand Forks is about 1.5 hours away, so we got up early and found our way to Valley Bone & Joint Clinic.
Barney had been having problem with one of his eyes, so we stopped in at an eye clinic just around the corner from the podiatrist.
Now you know where we are and what life is like for us. Ready to start learning about this area of North Dakota? I know I am.
