Tuesday, 13 July 2021
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| today's route |
Then I got on I-29, which you can see on the map heads north toward Canada. Not surprisingly, I saw quite a few semis with Manitoba license plates.
I also drove through a whole lot of very flat croplands. Plenty of corn, of course, and lots of some kind of grain. My pre-trip research told me Fargo is at the heart of Red River wheat country, so presumably all this grain is wheat.
Miles and miles of I-29 turned out to be under construction, and many exits were detoured around, including the one I wanted. I got off at the next exit, miles past what I'd prepared for, and stopped at the side of the parallel road to take a good look at my maps. I managed to figure out an alternate route that wouldn't have me getting back on the interstate, and off I went, trusting to the mapmakers. And they were right.
I got off the highway at Grandin (pop. 173 in 2010), established in 1881. Wikipedia says it's now a bedroom community, though what I saw still looked like the farming community I think it always has been. I passed a facility with no name visible, but the signs told the story:
← Sunflower Processing
Birdseed Shipping →
I continued to travel north on County Road 81, which paralleled the interstate so thoroughly that I could see it most of the way north. But I wasn't tempted to move back over because Co. Rd. 81 was far more relaxing for me to drive. The speed limit was 65, which is what I usually go even on the interstate, the road surface was fine and there was a refreshing absence of road construction.
At Hillsboro, est. 1881, "Home of the Burros (school mascot)," I came across several unexpected points of interest. First, I passed an airplane that had a banner painted on the tail saying "Happy Hooligans." I'd heard of this but couldn't remember what the name referred to so looked it up. Happy Hooligans was the nickname for North Dakota Air National Guard's 119th Wing, and I found an explanation for that online. https://www.119wg.ang.af.mil/how-the-happy-hooligans-got-their-name This article mentioned an old comic strip named "Happy Hooligan," and that sounded familiar too, so I looked that up. https://en.wikipedia.org/Happy-Hooligan I'm not sure comic strips have changed all that much in the last 120 years.
I was looking for a place to stop and walk the dogs and stumbled on the county courthouse in Hillsboro, and the veterans memorial beside it.
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| Traill County Courthouse, built 1905 in the Beaux Arts style. |
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| Veterans Memorial There are tablets on both sides of each of those 6 columns, with names of veterans (I think those who died while serving) beginning with WWI. Traill County lost a staggering number of men in WWI. |
I passed a plant for Anchor Ingredients, which says it's a "premium ingredient company supplying the food, pet and feed markets domestically and abroad." "Ingredients" include barley, chickpeas, flaxseed, buckwheat - a real range.
Back on the road, I saw a highway warning sign showing the slippery road picture, and underneath there was one word: "MUD." I couldn't see a trace of mud, or any source for mud, anywhere around, but they don't put up these highway signs for no reason. I was glad to be avoiding slippery roads, muddy or otherwise.
My "check engine" icon started blinking on and off again. And then it stopped again right away.
At Mayville, I passed the Mayport Farmers Co-op. There are grain storage silos all over this part of the state, and farmers co-ops too, for that matter. The name Mayport refers to Mayville as well as the town of Portland, which is only about 1 mile west of Mayport's city limits. Mayville (named for May, the first white child born in the area) touts Mayville State University and its several city parks, including one I saw on the banks of the Goose River. Attractive place, but the Census folks say it's been losing residents gradually over the last 20 years.
In Portland, I passed the Norseman Hall, showing once again the strong influence of immigrants from the Scandinavian countries on US culture in the upper Midwest. The numerous Lutheran churches were another clue.
Speaking of grain silos, as I was a minute ago, I saw this family farm and liked their silo.
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| Interesting that this farmhouse was sited almost on top of the railroad track. Note the thick windbreak of trees along the west side. |
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| Barn and silo - many of these individual silos had some kind of decoration, but this was the most attractive one I've seen. |
I continued to pass vast fields of corn, grain and some low-growing leafy green crop.
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| I'm still guessing soybeans, though I honestly don't know. |
A little farther down the road, I saw a whole herd of cows tromping through a field that was planted with this crop. I don't think the cows were supposed to be there - they sure weren't looking where they were putting their feet, and with so many of them, I figured there'd be a fair amount of crop damage. I don't know where they were headed - they were walking toward the highway and I didn't see a gate anywhere - which is another reason I thought they weren't supposed to be there. I sure wished I knew who owned that field so I could call and tell them they might have a problem.
As you can see, the land around here is still mostly very flat, with occasional small hills. But a little farther on, I came to a hill marked as having a 6% grade. The road ran down to the Sheyenne River. I came across this river many times during my travels here.
A couple of miles east of Cooperstown I passed a sign saying "November-33 Missile Silo." Though I was heading for a Cold War missile facility, I wasn't expecting to see anything here and didn't bother to stop because it didn't look like there was anything there. I saw a fence and a 10' (maybe) antenna sort of thing and some kind of cap or something in the ground. And that's it. But after I'd passed, my brain said you know, that was probably actually something and I should have stopped. But it was a no-shoulder 2-lane road with a moderate amount of traffic, and I couldn't figure out how to turn around so I missed it. I learned later that because of the START treaty with the Soviet Union, the missile at this site was removed and destroyed, but the facility was left for historical and educational purposes.
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| Griggs County Courthouse |
Cooperstown has about 1,000 residents and is the county seat, I discovered by accident. From the looks of it, this building is no longer used. It was built in 1884, and I'm sure it needs a lot of renovations to make it comfortable to work in. But it does seem a shame to let something as attractive as this go to waste.
According to signs I saw around town, I'd just missed Cooper Days, which included a bake sale, a car show and a street dance.
I saw a Trump banner hanging in the window of someone's house.
Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site
The state historical society put out a little pamphlet to encourage visitors to stop by, and frankly it does a much better job of explaining the situation here than anything I can paraphrase from the tour I took there. So here it is.
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| p. 1 |
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| p. 2 |
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| p. 3 |
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| p. 4 |
The free tour provided at the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility showed us the above-ground areas that included security, recreation and kitchen facilities, and the 2 below-ground rooms, one for launch control equipment, and the other for the 2-person missile launch crew. The tour started with a video, which I skipped so I could walk the dogs and feed the critters. The tour guide told me I could watch it on YouTube, and it's called "America's Ace in the Hole." I haven't watched it yet, but you can if you're interested.
In the entry room were some displays giving background to what we'd be seeing.
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| This one and the next explain the Cold War. |
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| This one and the next explain the facility I'm touring. |
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| Why North Dakota? |
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| These are the units, each of which had a missile facility. I'm in the "O" section - "Oscar." |
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| These headlines speak for themselves. |
The facility I drove up to looked very Cold-War-ish and forbidding.
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| It sits out in the middle of the field, and I could see it from a long way away, which means they could see anyone coming from a long way away. |
This is the office for the security team on each shift:
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| A gun-carrying visitor would fire into the round space at left to prove his gun was empty. |
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| At night the room was dark and the panel under the windows was backlit so the guards could see outside and still do their work. |
There were 10 men at the facility at any one time: 2 missileers, the chef and the guards. A chef was on duty every day to keep the crew fed, but as far as I could tell, this chef didn't actually do any of the cooking.
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| Enlargement of that white patch in the middle is below. |
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| This seems to be the actual menu, since it includes breakfast which the black board doesn't. It sounded like each crew member had to order in advance, and the food was prepared in a kitchen in Wyoming and sent here. |
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| And this is how the food was presented. Your basic old-fashioned TV dinner. |
There were bedrooms down the hall and a recreation room, with a TV and a VCR (when it was invented).
This particular facility was built 1964-66, which should tell you all you need to know about the interior decoration. On the other hand, this was the last wing built and was considered the Cadillac of the units.
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| This is a model of the layout. |
The building in my photos is shown at ground level on this model. From there we took an old-fashioned freight elevator - the kind with the 2 metal gates that have to be closed - down 50' to the facilities below ground. In the model above, the launch equipment is housed in the module on the right, while the launch control center staffed at all times by a 2-person crew is in the module on the left.
One of the things I was curious about is to what extent, if any, the real equipment matched what was shown in the movie War Games. Turns out it wasn't too far off the mark.
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| The red thing is the door, which is standing open. The doors are made of concrete, lead and steel. |
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| You can see how thick the door is. When it's closed, bolts would come out of the door and enter the holes in the door frame to seal it. |
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In this photo at left, the yellow-and-black tape shows the edge of the floor, and you can see that there's quite a bit of space underneath.
The only photo I have of the equipment in this room is boring so I'm leaving it out. The other pod has plenty of equipment.
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| This is the door into the side for the missileers. It's a little smaller than the other but just as sturdy. By the way, the doors in this unit never got stuck, but it happened elsewhere. |
Our tour guide (the woman in purple in these photos) said she's been working here for 8 years, and now and then some of the former staff have come on the tour and have told her stories, which is how she knows some of what she told us.
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| fax, teletype, modem |
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| more equipment |
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| 2 separate control panels for the 2 missileers, as they were called |
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| The red box you can just see above this panel on the left contained 2 keys and the authentication codes that would launch the missiles. |
The job of missileer was stunningly boring - it was just the 2 of them, I think they had 24-hour shifts, and all they had to do was monitor the equipment and be prepared to launch a missile at a moment's notice. So the job was filled with tension that had nowhere to go. As an enticement, the Air Force started promising volunteers for this job that they could get a master's degree; this was a draw, and at least they were able to study while they were down here.
Something else they had to prepare for was the possibility of the air conditioner failing. If that happened, the missileers had 2 minutes to shut down the equipment to save it. (Never a dull moment down here, waiting for emergencies that never happened.)
And in a note of reassurance, the fact is that one site alone couldn't initiate a launch - at least 2 sites had to agree it was an official order.
The other thing they did was make art, though the designs had to be approved.
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| Not exactly art - the people who signed here were on their last tour of duty. I was especially impressed with the one who signed himself as "the consummate Vermonter." |
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| This is Sven, a Norse god and important to all the men who worked in these facilities - over time, this drawing appeared in many of them. It was taken from a Molly Hatchet album cover. |
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| An obvious reference to the movie Ghostbusters. Oscar the Grouch was the mascot for Oscar-Zero. Both characters are wearing a Kremlin Krusher patch - a comment by the artist. |
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| Our tour guide said she never thought to question this, assuming it was just a picture of Bugs Bunny on the beach. But one of the missileers told her, in a Bugs Bunny voice, that it was a reference to "That's All, Folks." I guess they'd have a black sense of humor doing a job like this. |
Back on the road
I have a slight touch of claustrophobia and would never have been selected for this duty, even if I'd wanted to. So it was a relief to me to be back above ground and out in the fresh air where the prairie wind was blowing.
We went back to looking at cows and crops and bees. And then came Devil's Lake. It's the largest natural body of water in North Dakota, covers 160,000 acres and has hundreds of miles of shoreline. It's a very popular fishing spot, I'm told.
I saw a Bald Eagle as I was getting near the campground. And I saw it fairly close-to so there's no possibility of mistake. It's always nice to see a Bald Eagle.
I was heading for a state park on a sort of island - well, it's called Graham's Island, and it's either an actual island with a 5-mile causeway connecting it to the mainland, or it's not really an island but close enough for the name.
I was exhausted by the time we got there. The tour had been an hour and a half, which is a fair amount of standing and walking. And then trying to drive with a bunged-up arm is a chore. It just wore me out. But I managed to get the dogs walked - twice - without incident, and got us all fed, which is all I asked of myself.
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