Day 26 Summer 2012 Road Trip

We were awake early this morning because we have a long driving day ahead of us and a few things we want to stop and see along the way.

Our first stop of the day is in Boissevain MB to see Tommy the Giant Turtle.  A roadside attraction that stands 22 ft tall.

 

Shortly afterwards we are at the border and have our passports ready for the US Customs agent.  We cleared through with no fuss, no muss, no bother.

  

Our first stop at the border is to visit the International Peace Garden.  This garden straddles the Canadian / US border.  On the North side of the garden you are in Canada, on the South side of the garden, you are in the US.

  

The park plants over 150,000 flowers each year.   I won’t post each and every photo here on the blog, just a few, for the rest, you can find them on our FLICKR site.

  

There are many ponds and fountains throughout the property.

  

The Bell Tower is a prominent feature of the garden.

 

At the very West end of the park and straddling the border are the Peace Towers.

 

There is a small memorial to the attack of September 11 2001 with actual steel girders from the fallen towers.

  

There is a very large collection of cactus, they warn you not to touch any of them … duh…   We didn’t see our favourite cactus though, the Saguaro.

  

We wandered around the gardens for a couple of hours before leaving and entering North Dakota.



This is our first time in North Dakota.  Hard to believe that after over 80,000 KM of road trips over the last 5 years that we have never been to North Dakota.  Unfortunately, we won’t be staying and visiting this State.  There is no where to stay.  Every single hotel in this State is booked solid for the foreseeable future, some say booked solid right through 2017.  The reason is the oil boom.  North Dakota sits on a pool of oil that the US desperately needs and as a result, all the accommodations are filled with the oil workers.  The tourism industry must be suffering because us tourists can’t get anywhere near the places we want to visit.   We will drive through North Dakota into Minnesota where we can once again find accommodations.

  

Now I can officially add North Dakota to our “Visited States Map”.   As you can see, we just need to visit Hawaii, Louisiana and the New England States to complete the map.



We did stop a few times along our route.  This stop is to visit the W’eel Turtle in Dunseith ND.  This turtle is made from over 2,000 wheel rims welded together.

  

We did see a wind farm, perhaps North Dakota and the USA needs more of these and lessen their dependence on oil.

  

Another roadside attraction and stop along our way is in Rugby ND.  This rock cairn marks the geographical center of North America. 

  

In Grand Forks ND we saw two more roadside attractions.   The smiley face water tower.

 

And the Kegs Drive-In.  They still use the outdoor speaker system to order your burgers.



Leaving Grand Forks ND we cross the border into Minnesota.

  

Somewhere in this cloud of dust is a harvester/combine working in the fields.



We passed this wide load, wind turbine blades, they are about 70 ft long.

  

We got to our hotel in Bemidji Minnesota (say that 3 times fast) around 6pm.  We would have preferred a shorter day and would have liked to spend some time in North Dakota, but that is not to be on this road trip.

To see all of our photos from today, you can find them on our FLICKR site.

Day 25 Summer 2012 Road Trip

We are staying a couple of days in Brandon Manitoba to give us enough time to visit a nearby National Park.  


We left the hotel around 10:00 am and headed North on Manitoba 10.


  

An hour later we entered Riding Mountain National Park and paid our admission fee for the day.

  

Once inside the park we head for the East entrance gate.  This gate was constructed in 1933 and is a great example of the types of entrance gates our National Parks used to have. 

Now the park entrances have modern buildings, but I prefer the rustic and historically correct entrances.

 

Driving the 30 km gravel road to the East entrance and then returning back to the main road, we expected to see lots of wildlife.  After all, Riding Mountain National Park is supposed to have the largest population of Black Bears in all of North America.  We also expect to see plenty of moose according to the signage along the way.



In reality, we saw nothing.  There was possibly something behind the tree line, but you can’t see beyond that, so unless the bear or moose is right in the roadway, you won’t see anything.

  

60 km later, we are back on the parks main road.  We are still seeing warning signs to watch out for the moose, and we see lots of places where a moose would love to hang out, but not one moose.

 

We drove to the North end of the Park and got this view of the land below Riding Mountain.

 


We turned around at this point and headed South back into the park.  We thought we would take the gravel road out to the buffalo paddock and at least see some buffalo since we weren’t finding any bears or moose.

  

Part way along this road we came to some serious tree damage caused by high winds recently.

  

We arrived at the buffalo paddock and entered through the gate.  We are warned not to get out of our vehicle.

 

I don’t know why we have to stay in our vehicle, we drove around the complete enclosure and could not find one buffalo.   Based on our experience of this park, there is a whole lot of nothing going on here.
We were fortunate to see this Great Grey Owl though.  Much nicer to see them out in the wild like this instead of in a cage at the Calgary Zoo.

  

We also saw this Yellow Bellied Sapsucker.


  

At this point we are wishing that we could see a bear or a moose, so we head to a popular part of the park… The Wishing Well.   Nice gardens surround the well.

  

We drop our coins into the well.

 

On nearby Clear Lake there is a lot of activity on the water.

  

We headed to the nearby town of Wasagaming MB where the Visitor Centre is located and we had a late lunch and bought the requisite souvenirs.

 

There were many stuffed animals and displays inside the Visitor Centre.

  

It is time to head back to Brandon MB and our hotel.  We stopped at the Safeway near our hotel and bought some groceries and had our dinner in our hotel room this evening.

Tomorrow we will cross over into the USA and visit a State that we have never been to before.

If you wish to see all of our photos from today, you can find them on our FLICKR site.