Highway 2, Part 2 – North Dakota

Stop me if I’ve told you this story before (). For a good portion of my younger years, my family moved around constantly. My Dad was the boss of, as we referred to it, a doodlebuggin’ crew. In plain English, that’s a seismograph crew, the guys who go out and look for oil. An exploration crew. As a geophysicist, my dad was the guy who interpreted the squiggly lines and said, “drill here!” Then off we’d go to the next location, sometimes moving on before our furniture caught up with us. We stayed in more than a few motels back then. There was a core group of families on our crew who also had kids so when we moved, we all moved together. It was an awesome way to grow up. Is it any wonder that I love to travel? That I love to move on before familiarity sets in?

I bring this up because one of the many places I lived was Glendive, MT. When we planned our route across the northern part of the U. S., I included a stop there, even though it took us off Highway 2. I called my Mom, eager for information and details about our life in Glendive so that I could revisit and try to remember. All she could offer was “we lived to the west of downtown.” Hmmmm.

We decided to skip Glendive and head on to North Dakota. We were ready to add a new state to our map! We hadn’t made any advanced campground reservations but kind of thought we’d go visit the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the Enchanted Highway. But we were enjoying Highway 2 so much, we didn’t really want to take a detour. I started looking for places to stay and found the Lewis and Clark State Park located a few miles outside Williston right on the Missouri River, so that’s where we headed.

We bypassed Glendive and headed straight for North Dakota!

When I told my Dad where we were, he said he remembers working near the river with his crew. In fact, when we left Glendive and moved to Oklahoma City, my dad stayed behind to finish up work in the Williston area. While he was there, he got his pilot’s license and when it was time to join us in OKC, he bought a plane and flew it home! At the time we had a red VW Bug named Precious, so when Dad arrived with our new-to-us airplane, we named it Super Precious!

Super Precious back in her heyday.

I made the mistake of reading information online regarding our arrival at Lewis & Clark State Park and followed instructions without verifying it first. Ugh! You’d think by now we know better! Several reviews for the park mentioned extensive, traffic-inducing road work between Williston and the park, so we routed around it. What a mistake! We literally added an hour to our already long drive and wandered down roads that seemingly cut through farmer’s fields. Needless to say, we were a bit cranky upon arrival. The next day when we drove the few miles back into Willison, we found a brand-spanking new, beautifully paved highway with absolutely no delays!

You’ve no doubt read about Williston over the years. Known as Boomtown, USA, it is at the heart of the Bakken Shale Formation and home to thousands of folks who moved here during the Great Recession to go to work in the oilfields. In order to house them all, row after row of “man camps” were constructed. As we drove across town on our detour route, we passed hundreds of these camps, now empty. With the drop in oil prices, Boomtown has gone bust. This is all temporary, of course, as the boom and bust cycles of the oil fields are par for the course. My sister Judy likes to joke that the boom is in full swing when the Rolls Royce dealer opens in Odessa. 

Along the route of Highway 2, North Dakota is beautiful. Shockingly beautiful. During our three days at Lewis & Clark, we mainly got caught up on chores and relaxed at home but we also made time to drive through the vibrant countryside.

Stunning colors along the road to Lewis and Clark State Park.

 
Our site at Lewis and Clark State Park.

The view out our window was not too shabby.

Lewis and Clark State Park on the banks of the Missouri River.

On our last night in the park we got a knock on the door. The park ranger had come to inform us that a massive storm was on the way and gave us instructions to the nearest shelter (bathrooms) should we choose to abandon Scoopy and save our own lives. Well, he probably wasn’t saying it was that dire, but it kind of sounded that way. Still, we chose to ride it out. A couple of hours later, we wondered what all the fuss was about.

We could see storm clouds over the river, so we jumped in Toadie and headed out for a drive. We barely rounded the corner and here came the ranger. Another storm was brewing! This time it was forecast to come right over the park. “We’re expecting heavy rain and 70 MPH winds,” he said. We headed home to take cover.

The calm before the storm.

And wow, it was a doozy of a storm! We again decided to stay with Scoopy. If you live in an RV, then you already know that there’s no place to hide. Literally no place. Any flying debris could come right into your rig at any time. I sat in the floor with my back along the frame of the big slide, which we had brought in. Steven grabbed his camera and sat in the passenger seat. Of course he did. We had brought in our slides, thankfully because the wind was ferocious! Thunder! Lightning! Sideways rain! All the drama! Turns out it was a bit too dark for Steven to capture anything with his camera but here’s what we got with our dashcam.

Storm notwithstanding, we had a fairly restful stay at Lewis and Clarke. When we left, we once again headed east on Highway 2. We found a little campground called Jan’s Stall Mall right on the highway which was perfect for an overnight. We were the only ones camping but there was a party going on in the clubhouse. Upon check-in, the ladies offered Steven a few cupcakes, which of course he did not refuse.

Jan’s Stall Mall was a perfectly lovely stop.

The welcoming committee made Steven an offer he couldn’t refuse!

Our last stop in North Dakota would take us off Highway 2, south to Fargo. Steven rarely requests stops along our travels, he usually leaves the planning to me. But he is a big fan of Fargo, the movie and the TV series, so he wanted to go see the infamous wood chipper. If you’ve never seen the movie, you probably don’t know what that is, but if you have, and you’ve been through Fargo, chances are you stopped to see it, too. It’s a popular place!

We had more stormy weather on the way to Fargo.

The Fargo Visitors Center. That’s a replica of the wood chipper outside. You have to go inside for the real thing.

The actual wood chipper used in the movie (don’t worry, the leg is fake).

By taking this detour we missed about 113 miles of Highway 2 from Grand Forks to Bemidji, MN, but if you ask Steven, he’ll say it was worth it!

UP NEXT:  Marvelous Minnesota!

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