North Dakota - Day 14 - Grand Forks

Turtle River State Park, Arvilla
Wednesday, 14 July 2021

Before I left last night's campground,  I took the dogs over to the boat launch for a walk.  I often do that, if the campground has one, because there're rarely any dogs at a boat launch and there's usually plenty of space to walk in.  At the boat launch on Graham's Island there were a couple dozen boat trailers parked, showing the lake was already getting some customers.  One fisherman told me he was fishing for walleye, though the lake is also called the Perch Capital of the World.

today's route

There's a decent-sized town called Devils Lake (pop. 7,100), perched on the edge of Devil's Lake.  (Actually, almost nobody throws in the apostrophes on either Graham's Island or Devil's Lake, but this former English teacher just doesn't believe that's right.)

Native Americans called this lake Miniwaukan, meaning Spirit Water.  But some early explorers misunderstood this to mean Bad Spirit, because of legends of lake monsters and drowned warriors.  And that's where the name Devil's Lake came from.  In the 1800s a treaty with an Indian tribe established the Spirit Lake Reservation.  I found conflicting information about whether the Indians had relinquished claim to this land - especially since there's a Spirit Lake Casino in the area.

In Devil's Lake I saw the turn for the North Dakota School for the Deaf, which is in town.  There's also a large public fish cleaning station in town.

Instead of taking the main road into Grand Forks, I decided to take the scenic route.  And what I saw were huge flocks of some species of duck, vast crop fields, many cows, marshy areas and low hills, occasional farmhouses.  Lots of lakes (Graves Lake, Wood Lake, Black Tiger Bay, Reeves Lake), plus many prairie pothole ponds, and large numbers of either gulls or pelicans (I couldn't tell from a distance).

I passed the town of Tokio, established 1905 as a station along the Great Northern Railway.  There are 2 stories of where the name came from: (a) a railway official chose it based on the Dakota word "to-ki" or gracious gift; (b) it was named after Tokyo, Japan.  I'm guessing (b).

Prairie Public Radio is the public network that's heard across the state, with repeaters in all reasonably-sized cities.  From 9-3 daily, they play music - usually classical but sometimes a weird kind of pop music.  The classical puts me to sleep, and I find the other hard to listen to.  So I either go without, or I scan for country stations - the alternative being the many religious stations in the state.

I've noticed many "Youth Camps" all over the state.  And when I looked that up online, I found a listing of a very wide range of kids camps: YMCA, Bible, 4-H, volleyball, aerospace.  And they're located all over the state.

As I drove, I couldn't help but notice that something is wiping out lots of pine trees around here.

I passed grain co-op elevators in many towns.

I went through a town named McVille, "Small Enough to Know You, Large Enough to Serve You."  The name just struck me as odd.

Several times I passed a brown & white hawk - I guess they were Red-tailed Hawks - but what caught my eye is that they were perched on those big round hay bales, peering around for prey.

Grand Forks
This is the 3rd largest city in the state, with 57,000 in town and nearly double that in the metropolitan area, which includes the twin city of East Grand Forks in MN.  Grand Forks is also the home of the University of North Dakota, and I drove around the campus.

It's a large, attractive campus, with several accommodations for winter weather, such as enclosed overhead walkways between buildings.

UND is the home of the Aerospace Foundation, including studies in Air Traffic Control and Flight Simulators.  An Entrepreneur Center has its own separate building.  There's a major presence on campus of sororities and fraternities.

In town I found the USDA Nutrition Research Center, and the North Dakota Museum of Art.  Grand Forks also touts its historic downtown, and I know I drove through some sections of housing from the early part of the 1900s.

Back on the road
Driving back west toward the campground, I saw lots of haze in the air.  I'd been hearing on the radio that wildfires in Canada are sending a lot of smoke down here to ND and MN, and that seems to be the case.  It sure smells like smoke.  Turtle River State Park, tonight's campground, is only about 75 miles from the Canadian border.

A nice young park ranger at the state park told me that pine trees don't belong this far west of their natural habitat in northeastern MN, and that's why so many are dying - they're just not adapted to the conditions here.

He also told me he grew up in MN and informed me that the Mississippi River starts not far from the Red River of the North, but one flows south and the other flows north.  He said it was the result of a prehistoric lake that was here, but not in the Mississippi River area of MN, so it influenced the Red River flow but not the other.  He told me there was a trail in the campground with signs that explained this, so I went looking for it.

That squiggly line next to Lake Agassiz might be
the Mississippi River and the line going into the bottom of the lake
might be the Red River.  If so, you can see the different influences at work. 

There may well have been more explanation in signs farther along the trail, but I was pretty tired and didn't want to go find out.  This sign satisfied my level of curiosity.

Nearby, I came across an old CCC building that the campground was celebrating.

It's becoming clear to me that our country would be very much the poorer without the work done by the CCC fellows.

I started wondering if this New Deal program had to fight to get its initial funding, but the websites I found don't say explicitly how the first funding came about.  What they do say is that the CCC was the most popular of the New Deal programs, and that public support encouraged Congress to continue its funding.  Here's some more information, if you're curious.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Civilian-Conservation-Corps