Bismarck to Knife River and on to Saskatchewan (posted from Java Express, Regina, SK)
(this post covers 11-15 August)

Tuesday, 15 August-
Today we drove on to Regina. Since Labashi had been planning this for some time and had a good map of the city, we found the house she and her parents lived in for the first year after her birth. She of course took pictures of the house and the street. Regina is famous for having planted some 350,000 trees throughout the city and there were plenty on this street. We believe the look of the street has changed a lot but we won’t know till we take the pictures back to her mom and dad. Labashi talked with the next-door neighbors but they had moved in too recently and didn’t know anything useful. We also took pictures of the schoolyard nearby where her Dad said the locals would flood a section of the playground and use it as a neighborhood ice rink. We went to the church the family had attended and also to the hospital where she was born.
Afterwards we turned tourist and visited Government House, the home of the Lieutenant-Governors of Saskatchewan from 1891 until 1945. We learned that the ‘lef-tenant’-governor was the Queen’s representative in the province—a position we would call the Governor in the States.
Later, we drove around the city, ostensibly in search of the city’s three Wal-marts but also just to get a feel for the size and makeup of the city. On this beautiful sunny day (temp=32C) Regina looks like a great place to live. Their city park is three times as big as New York’s Central Park, the streets are mostly tree-lined and very clean and there’s a lot of choice in shopping. We should probably come back when it’s 40-below in a howling wind to get the full experience!
We spent a lazy hour in the hottest part of the day at the local park with the van parked in the shade and the doors hanging open to catch the nice breeze. Then we went looking for a restaurant called ‘The Willows on the Lake’ which reportedly has Saskatchewan specialties. We finally found it but were a bit late—since we had no reservations they put us out on the outside deck and it was just too hot out there in the sun. We then drove to the Science Center which reportedly has a good ‘world fare’ restaurant called Zest. Our bad luck at The Willows turned out to be very good luck for us at Zest; the food was incredible. We started with a ‘pre-appetizer shot’ (they called it) of watermelon juice and a bit of Cointreau. We then had ‘Terrine of Elk and Bison’ which was on the ‘starters’ list. This can only be described as a type of spiced, light meatloaf with a slice of cold bacon and blue cheese atop it, served with a salad of mixed greens and Saskatoon-berry salsa (you had to be there…). Labashi then had a second ‘starter’ of fennel ravioli while I had a vegetable coconut curry with Thai spices and pineapple. If these foods are representative of Zest, I could eat there every week and never tire of it.
We took a walk around the outside of the Science Center and then headed for the Regina-South Wal-mart for our informal campground for the night. We spent the evening reading and blogging and listening to the local radio stations.

Monday, 14 August-
Today we awoke to a significantly cooler morning—it was 55, some 10 degrees lower than other nights recently. We drove across SR 200 from Stanton, stopping briefly in Hazen for supplies (it was in Hazen, ND where we passed a local ice-cream shop called “Sizzlin’ Sundaes”--- I swear!) then we headed up SR22. After Killdeer we saw hills in the distance and before long were suddenly presented a fantastic view of ‘badlands’ cut by the Little Missouri River as our road climbed those hills. Once atop the butte, we came upon the entrance to the Little Missouri River Primitive State Park. The drive in to the park provided a great view of the badlands, looking down into them like looking into the Grand Canyon. As we arrived at the park, we saw it is dedicated to horseback riding—in fact we’ve never seen one like it. Where a ‘normal’ state park has a campground, this one has extensive corrals and fencing beside the campgrounds (both RV and tent). Around the edges of the campgrounds are the normal outbuildings you’d see at a horse farm. We saw signs on the park roads that said “No Galloping”. At the back of the park is a trailhead and another set of corrals leading to trails leading out the butte and down into the breaks. On the way out, we saw a cowboy-hatted ranger mending fence and stopped to talk with him. He was great; he was very enthusiastic about the breaks and the state park being ‘the hidden jewel of the state’. He tried mightily to convince us to drive past the park another mile and rent horses to tour the breaks. We probably should have taken his recommendation. We felt we wanted to keep on moving and get into Canada today but this would have been a good one, I think.
We then drove on to New Town which is in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. New Town was formed when the government planned the building of the Garrison Dam, which flooded much of the historical homeland of the Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa. New Town and the land around it was the new reservation. We toured the Three Affiliated Tribes museum which was very interesting and had great historical photos and paintings of tribal chiefs of all three tribes plus objects once belonging to some of the chiefs.
We then continued our trip out into the North Dakota backcountry above New Town. We soon found ourselves among field after field of wheat and barley. And we saw hundreds of new oil derricks plus active oil drilling. When we stopped for gas at Tioga, I asked another gas customer about all the oil work. He said the area is part of a very large oil field extending to western Montana and the whole area has been ‘going crazy’ with work on oil rigs, particularly since the price of oil has sky-rocketed.
We continued up to the Canadian border and crossed below Estevan, Saskatchewan shortly before 1700. We drove on to Weyburn, SK, and Nickle Lake Regional Park, our campground for the night. Cost for our site tonight was $15 CDN. We took a little walk around the park and stopped in and chatted with the lady running the canteen and had an ice cream. Later that evening we saw the Milky Way! The winds rose after dark and we had to move the van to get away from a pesky branch rubbing against the top of the skylight bubble. After moving the van I got out to come around to the door and glanced up. I had checked the sky earlier and had remarked to Labashi that it was a lot like home—too much light to see the Seven Sisters. But only an hour later the sky had many more stars than we usually see at home and the Milky Way was clearly visible. I noticed a satellite passing over and told Labashi to get her shoes and coat on and come out. Naturally, she immediately saw a shooting star and I missed it. We stayed out for a half-hour or so in the wind and saw three more shooting stars before a few bug bites drove us inside. What a great way to end the day.

Sunday, 13 August-
After a fairly heavy rainstorm, we awoke to a darkly-cloudy day with occasional rain—but we could see blue sky to the west. We drove a north a bit and stopped at a Nature Conservancy area we had passed the day before and soon had fresh sunny skies above us—it was a spectacular day. This parking area turned out to be a trailhead for the Nature Conservancy’s Prairie Trail which we could see from the map made a nice little loop of about two hours walking time. Just after starting the trail I could see something up on the ridge off in the distance and thought it must be a statue—something unlikely to have been done by The Nature Conservancy. It turned out to be a bison facing toward us and Labashi started maneuvering around for a photo of it against the sky while I went up the other direction to explore an old cemetery. We hadn’t gone far, though, when she suddenly said she had scared a snake—and a big one…in the tall grass. She said she could tell it was a big one going away from her because the tall grass moved in a sinuous shape as the snake went through it. We remembered that last night we had asked the local couple about snakes in this area and they had said there were rattlesnakes around but there were reportedly very few of them this side of the river—but they had indeed seen one in the state park we were in. Labashi never actually saw the snake so we don’t know what it was but we decided to stick to the trail and keep our eyes peeled.
The walk was terrific. It led up and over the hill and into the next valley, then up the far side of that valley. As we walked up the far side, we looked back and there was the bison, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. The ghost-bison took a great interest in us but after awhile went back to browsing. But he was browsing toward our return path so it might get interesting later. We continued to the top of that hill and the views there were absolutely first-rate. We had a 360-degree view of the river hills and there before us was the great Missouri River. We could see across the valley to Washburn and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center we had visited yesterday and we could see well downriver toward Bismarck.
After our hike and lunch, we drove on to Fort Clark Historic State Park where we visited what is now just an open, grassy field with hundreds of depressions. This was a fur-trading outpost and Mandan village. The depressions had at one time been earthen homes of Mandans and Hidatsa. And it was here that ninety percent of the Mandans died of smallpox in one year—1837—after smallpox came upriver on the steamboat ‘St. Charles’.
It started to rain as we finished our walking tour of this park and we drove on to Knife River Indian Villages National Historical Site in the rain. We ran inside and happened to arrive just in time for a charming presentation by ‘Ranger Ray’ about wildfire fire-fighting. I say charming because ‘Ranger Ray’ is this 22-year-old sprite of a girl who has just finished her forest fire training and passed the tests qualifying her as a Fire-Fighter II but has yet to even smell the smoke of a real fire. The ‘Ray’, by the way, is short for ‘RayAnne’ but as she says in her no-nonsense way: “EVERYbody calls me Ray”. Ray went on to tell us about every item in her fire-line pack and haul bag, passing around EVERYTHING for us to look at- her box of band-aids, her foot powder, her water-bottle, her spare Nomex clothing etc. She was great, though…and I’m sure she will do well on the fire line. Her main concern is pulling her weight and not letting down her team.
After Ranger Ray’s LONG presentation (it took an hour), the sun had come out so we went out to the earthen lodge for a tour by--- you guessed it—Ranger Ray—now changed from her fire-fighter uniform to her National Park Service ranger uniform. Actually, the tour was very good. Ray was of course her ultra-thorough self and we were amazed at how much knowledge she had of the subject at hand. And remember, we also had a pretty good tour of a Mandan earthen lodge at On-a-slant Village just two days ago so we had some background info going in. Keep chargin’, Ranger Ray!
After Ray’s tour, we walked down to the Knife River, past the three fields of depressions where villages had once stood. There had at one time been about 5000 people in these villages and at the time Lewis and Clark passed through here, they were larger than either St. Louis or Washington, DC.
As we departed, we asked the ranger on desk duty about camping and she told us that the nearby town of Stanton had a small campground. We checked it out and found a nice little campground with good bathrooms and showers and right on the Knife River for $5 — I love it! We were camping within shouting distance of the place where Lewis and Clark first met Charbonneau and Sakakawea.

Saturday, 12 August-
This morning we took a morning bike ride on the bike path from Fort Abraham Lincoln toward Mandan and enjoyed the great views across the Missouri River. Then we finished our tour of the Fort at the Barracks. We almost skipped the barracks visit since we’ve seen many barracks at other reconstructed forts but, fortunately, we decided to go in. It was fantastic. The barracks had two sections, ‘L’ Company and ‘I’ Company of the Seventh Cavalry. On the ‘L’ Company side, the Barracks looked like the troops were just out for the day and would be back any minute. Each bed had a soldier’s name and his personal gear, complete with photos, bibles, mementos, medicines, glasses cases, etc, all awaiting the return of the soldiers. In the mess, the table was completely set and had the plates and cups turned upside down as was the custom of the time. The kitchen appeared ready to serve and the pantry was stocked with faux versions of the meats, vegetables, and fruits—they looked so real we picked up a spring onion from a bowl and had to smell it to tell that it wasn’t real.
On the ‘I’ Company side, however, it was different. All the bedrolls and personal gear were gone, leaving the starkly-white wood of the bunk frames. And each empty footlocker had a poster on it with the history of that soldier (including his enlistment information) and the fate of that soldier in relation to the Little Big Horn and, for those who did not perish at the Little Big Horn, details about the remainder of their lives after the Little Big Horn. Three soldiers were lucky enough to have been teamsters and one a cook who were temporarily detailed to another Fort. The majority of the men were of Irish descent and most well under 30 years old.
After our Barracks visit we cleaned up the van, showered and drove north, following Route 1806. We were confused for a while by the AAA map which showed the road as Route 1086 but soon figured it out. Only a few miles out of town the road turned to gravel and a very dusty gravel it was. That went on for some twenty miles but we loved it; we had views of the Missouri which we later learned have changed very little in the two hundred years since the Corps of Discovery came through.
We stopped at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and spent about two hours there before going on to Fort Mandan, the expedition’s winter camp for five months in 1804-1805. Both were well done but Fort Mandan was our favorite; it’s one thing to see artifacts in cases in a nice, air-conditioned museum but quite another to visit the primitive little triangular fort where they survived a winter with temperatures down to 45 below zero.
After Fort Mandan, we drove back to Cross Ranch State Park along the gravel road and camped there for the night ($13). We took our chairs down to the Missouri and sat along it waiting for sunset. A local couple came along and we chatted for quite a long time. We had lots of questions about what it was like to grow up and live in the area. We learned that it wasn’t quite that cold last year getting down ‘only’ to 20-below. The biggest problem locally, however, is the drought. They are in the fifth year of drought and it’s hurting local farmers. Since the can’t grow much hay and there isn’t much green for the cows, the farmers have to buy feed for them. We also asked about housing. Bismarck is apparently growing fast; housing prices here are also rising. The local couple said they’ve been looking at houses lately and homes that were $95K just last year or so are now going for $140K.

Friday, 11 August-
Today we crossed a sizable chunk of North Dakota west-to-east across I-94 from Fargo to Bismarck. Along the way we passed many lakes which had been designated as wildlife refuges, apparently because this area is in a major flyway. Each lake only seemed to have a few birds now but I imagine there are many more during migrations.
We also saw a marked change in the landscape as we crossed the state. On the eastern side of the state, the farmland looked much like it did in central Minnesota; very large, completely flat farmfields with wheat stubble, corn, or soybeans; equipment consisting of extra-large combines, dual-wheel tractors and grain haulers everywhere; and many of the farmhouse/barn complexes set in groves of trees, apparently for protection from the winter winds roaring ‘cross the plain. About a half-hour before Bismarck, the landscapes started changing—much drier (now a golden brown), for instance, more rolling, and more western-looking.
We drove south of Bismarck to Mandan and Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. This fort was the departure point for General Custer and the 7th Cavalry in their rendezvous with destiny at the Little Big Horn. Today was a hot day (97) but not so oppressively humid and we had a steady wind of about 25 miles an hour so we did the tour of the park on our bicycles. The high point for us was the On-a-Slant Mandan Village, which has excellent reconstructions of the Mandan earthen homes. This village was already in ruins when Lewis and Clark camped nearby and noted its existence in1804. The Mandans had moved further upstream to the Knife River.
That evening we attended the Fort Abraham Lincoln Melodramas. These were two very melodramatic plays put on by the Fort’s Dramatic Society. These were the type of plays where we were instructed to cheer the hero, boo the villains, and sigh at the pretty maid. They were of course ridiculous but nonetheless were a treat for the kids. The high point for us was the intermission, where two of the college-age dramatists sang and fiddled some very good Irish songs. Afterwards we stayed overnight at the Fort’s campground ($13).