Day 31 – Drive to Minneapolis

We had a couple of “Fargo” moments today which gave us a little insight into the city. First you need to realize that Fargo is a small city and only has a little more than 111,000 residents, but it is also the biggest city in North Dakota and has a full collection of fast food restaurants and other stores. We were therefore surprised to read an article on the front page of the Sunday paper with a picture showing about 20 cars in line waiting to get into their first Sonic Drive-In. Apparently the grand opening was such an event it caused a traffic jam and the Rotary had to volunteer to direct traffic there for a month. I guess they got a little tired of McDonalds. The second moment was hearing them pronounce the word “Bison” on TV. They pronounce it like “bye-zin” instead of “bye-son” as we do. I think that maybe that is maybe part of the famous Fargo (Fair-go) accent. Accent? You betcha.

World's Largest Prairie Chicken

The drive to Minneapolis was 4 hours long and not too interesting except for a stop at the World’s Largest Prairie Chicken. We decided to pass on seeing the World’s Largest Pelican at Pelican Falls or the World’s Largest Catfish as they were too far off of I-94. So what is a Prairie Chicken? In the 1800’s when the buffalo still were plentiful on the plains, this area of Minnesota and actually several other states was tall prairie grass and prairie chickens were also plentiful. However when the land was cleared for farming, the tall prairie grass was removed and the prairie chicken was driven to near extinction without their natural habitat. Another case of Americans running roughshod over the environment. Seems to be a constant theme in the west.

In Minneapolis we did a quick visit to their Institute of Art to see their impressionist paintings (good but not great) and also did a driving tour of the downtown area and the University of Minnesota.