Montana Vacay, Part 1: Driving through North Dakota

My adventures in funemployment began a week ago Friday when I finished grading exams and turned in grades.

The initial plan was to head to the North Carolina shore, but after dad & brother decided they needed to work, the girls were free to spend the week however they wanted.  Somehow, it was decided (Thursday night) that Saturday morning, we would head West to Montana.

Thirty-six hours later, I found myself in the car on the way to Milwaukee. Spontaneous!

An hour before we reached Minneapolis, we somehow convinced my aunt (who lives there) to join us.  We were going to visit her daughter in Montana, after all!

The 23-hour one-way trip from Michigan to Montana was long and flat, but luckily my travel companions were chatty.  Also lucky?  The discovery of some amazing tourist stops in North Dakota.

Eastern ND is flat farmlands.  We spent hours driving through flat farmlands.

First up was Salem Sue, world’s largest holstein cow.

Sister may have been convinced that said cow was living (before she saw the cow), and given the very realistic vein on her underbelly (yuck!), perhaps you were fooled into thinking that she’s living, too?  PS Her udders have holes in them, too.  None of us were brave enough to stand under…

Our second super-awesome touristy adventure was the Enchanted Highway, a segment of road just off the main highway (I-94) in Western North Dakota that features several giant sculptures made from recycled farm equipment.  It is difficult to find the words to describe this one.

This sculpture is called “Fisherman’s Dream”.  Sister, aunt, and I are swimming among the fish to give you an idea of the scale here.

You know I dig the recycling of metals that would have otherwise sat in a landfill.  The scale and assortment of pieces/styles is really… something.  The schoolteacher-turned-artist has been building the sculptures on the highway since the 1990s, and has ambitions to add more sculptures in the upcoming years, with the goal of drawing visitors to his hometown, located ~30 miles South of the freeway – an ambitious undertaking.  If you ever find yourself in western North Dakota, it’s certainly worth checking out.

The Tin Family

Tin Mama.  Do you *heart* her drill bit earrings as much as I do?

And, our third adventure in touristy nonsense involved a stop in Medora, ND, in the badlands of North Dakota.  The badlands themselves are stunningly beautiful, and the town of Medora was an adorable old westernish town.  We stopped for pizza lunch and were treated to a ridiculously cheesy reinactment of something or other, complete with stoic civil war soldier & mama.

The badlands were such a visual treat after miles and miles of nothing but flat farmland!

This dude meant business.  He’d holler at passersby with appropriate phrases from the civil-war era.  Love his super-stoic face.

I should mention that we also found ourselves amused at several rest stops… Once by an abundance of deer heads mounted in a gift shop/hotel lobby:

And a second time by this sign, spotted shortly after we crossed the border into Montana:

“dudes please note!”

We finally arrived in Bozeman Montana Sunday evening, and met up with my cousin that lives there… more on our adventures with her tomorrow!