Day 30 – World’s Biggest…

Enchanted Highway Sculpture

We spent last night in Dickinson, ND, which is in the North Dakota oil fields which have recently been booming due to all the fracking they are doing. As a result, North Dakota has the highest rate of new jobs created in the US and also a housing shortage, hence leading to the high price for a motel room in Dickinson. Not a problem for us as we used Hilton Points.

We drove to Fargo today, but made a detour to drive the “Enchanted Highway.” The Enchanted Highway is a 30-mile stretch of road which features numerous scrap metal sculptures at various points along the highway. Photo is of the “Tin Family.” Dad is 45-feet tall and the family was constructed of farm tanks, telephone poles, barb wire, and augers. We also saw deer, prairie pheasants, grasshoppers and Teddy Roosevelt sculptures among others.

Triceratops at North Dakota Heritage Center

Made a quick stop in Bismarck to see another State Capitol and take a tour of the North Dakota Heritage Center. It was free, of course. I was afraid it would be lame, but it turned out to have a great collection of dinosaur bones which were mostly found in North Dakota. It probably was the best collection of dinosaur bones in a single site that we have seen. Outside the museum was a statue of a local girl made good – Sacagawea (guide and interpreter for Lewis and Clark). Yes, we came across their trail again as the Missouri River, one of Lewis and Clark's main routes of travel, passes through Bismarck.

World's Largest Holstein Cow

World's Largest Bison

North Dakota seems to like to claim the “World’s Biggest” of about anything you can think of. We saw in order the World’s Largest 1) Holstein Cow, 2) Sandhill Crane and 3) Bison.  I stood beside them to give you an idea of their size. The cow was "udderly" gigantic.

One humorous thing we came across was a billboard in Fargo which simply said “Be Polite.” We think that a sign like that would be full of bullet holes and covered with impolite graffiti back in Philadelphia.