Mission: North Dakota

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Day 4 - Crossing the Red River and Turning Left - Detroit Lakes, MN to Milbank, SD with the whole purpose of this trip lying in between. Wednesday, June 29, 2022.

[url=http://Interactive%20Map%20Day%204]https://new.spotwalla.com/trip/7667-1ca4900-7276/view



Day 4 Map

Mileage Log To Date (per MTC's ledger book)[ul] [li]Day1 265[/li] [li]Day2 162[/li] [li]Day3 257[/li] [li]3-Day Total = 684*
[/li][/ul] *Ferret's and Offroad's miles should total slightly less since they started this ride in Baraboo, WI and Cheryl and I started some 40 miles south and east of there.

After dinner, we walked back to our hotel. Cheryl and the guys headed off to bed. As I often do at the end of a riding day, I found a quiet spot outside the hotel to have a cigar. I poured a couple of ounces of bourbon from my leather-clad flask into a styrofoam cup I commandeered from the lobby's coffee station and reflected on our trip so far. The mission was to get Ferret to North Dakota. We would accomplish that before lunch on Wednesday.

684 miles and 3.5 days of riding.

684 miles and 3.5 days could have taken us to North Dakota and halfway back to Baraboo if I had plotted a reasonably efficient route. I took a puff on my cigar and a sip of my whiskey and wondered for a second if that wouldn't have been the better way to do this. "No" was the answer that came floating back to me on the scent of caramel, oak, and tobacco. No, the immediate mission of the trip was to check off North Dakota for Ferret, Cheryl and myself and Minnesota for Offroad, but it would have cheapened the trip if we just touched the welcome sign and came home.

Another sip of bourbon.

Friendships bloom from shared experiences and are strengthened by shared memories, I thought to myself. I can ride the Driftless Area of Wisconsin alone anytime I wish to, but I wanted to share that experience with my friends and create those memories that we can talk about years from now. I could have planned a straight route across Minnesota, but we wouldn't ridden along the St. Croix River or visited the headwaters of the Mississippi or taken a picture of Offroad with his head inside the mouth of the giant Walleye "caught" by Paul Bunyan. "Yes" I said, possibly aloud, as looked across at our parked bikes through the blue-gray smoke from my Fuente "Hemingway Best Seller" cigar, "the extra days and miles pay off in more than motorcycle seat time; they buy the building blocks of relationships".

We went to bed Tuesday night a scant 50 direct miles from the Minnesota/North Dakota state line -- 65 miles if we include the relationship miles.

The morning came a bit quicker than some of us had expected and it carried with it air that felt Canadian in its cool and crisp. We didn't know then how much much we'd miss the relative cool of the morning by the afternoon.

Gassed up at the station across the street from the Country Inn & Suites - Detroit Lakes and headed down E. Shore Drive, past the big vacation homes, past the Fireside, and down around the south end of Detroit Lake. Then it was west on S. Shore Drive for a bit with more lovely homes and occasional glimpses at boats and docks and beaches. My route meandered around a couple of other small lakes, and landed us on something called the Viking Trail. Still not 100% sure what the Viking Trail is, but Google tells me that it's a scenic road or more aptly a series of scenic roads that wind through Minnesota. Regardless of the details, I felt like we were a bit like the vikings exploring new (to us) territory. Heck, Ferret was even in yellow rain gear and his face seemed a little purple from the "bitter" 70f morning temps. It was a scenic ride, though, that deposited us on US10 headed toward Fargo.

I spent hours trying to find interesting roads in the eastern part of North Dakota. I reached out to riders I know from Minnesota and from South Dakota and asked them for recommendations. I reviewed North Dakota's list of scenic byways. Nothing. My friends said that all the good riding is out west in the state and I discovered that most of the scenic byways that were even remotely close to the eastern and southern border were gravel roads. Pretty hard to create motorcycling memories on grid of straight, flat, and generally neglected paved roads.

Not knowing during my planning phase that Mother Nature would wave her hand to make the long flat parts of Wednesday's ride memorable, I was tasked with adding something to replace the curves and the hills of the Driftless Area once we got into North Dakota. I came up with a few things. First, of course, we'd have to get a picture of Ferret at the "Welcome to North Dakota" sign. This wasn't as easy as it sounds since there appeared to be no such sign on US10 entering Fargo nor on any road that crossed the state line within 20 miles of Fargo. I managed to find one near the tiny town of Fairmount, ND. Second, Fargo itself has a lot of history and some interesting landmarks so I thought we'd ride through for a few photos. This would also help document that we were in ND if the sign at Fairmount was removed. Third, inspired by my friends Mike and Bob, I searched Google Maps for "World's Largest" and as luck would have it, there were several roadside attractions at which we could stop for a photo along the way once we headed south out of Fargo and onto that grid of asphalt.

Fargo is not a large city, but it is a city. There are homeless people and obviously wealthy folks. Nice buildings right next to dilapidated ones. There have traffic, one-way streets, and no parking zones. I don't live within Chicago's city limits, but I do wind up riding there and seeing these same things fairly regularly and on a much larger scale. Some of these things, but in fairness not all, make my friend Ferret anxious. He's more of a rule-follower, or as I call them "Boy Scouts", than my wife and that is saying something. I guess I've known for awhile that he gets stressed in certain situations, but it was on our East Coast Ride of Wonder that I really became aware of it especially when we were riding in Washington DC. That is why I spent about 1/2 hour planning our photo op in front of the historic Fargo Theater. I did Google Street View to see where the parking/no-parking zones were. Of course, there would be no parking allowed in front of the theater so all excepting Ferret would park short of the theater. Ferret would then pull up under the marquee and we would take photos of him on his bike with us standing along side. I'm not sure if I stressed him out more with the planning than I would have if I just stopped all of the bikes in front of the theater, but it all worked out in the end.


The Boys


Most of The Boys and The Girl

Once all the theatrics were complete, we headed off to the Fargo-Moorhead Visitors Center where we learned that a significant percentage of folks who have visited all 50 US states have left North Dakota for last. This was a particularly fun "fun fact" for us given that we were there so Ferret could check off his last motorcycling state in the "Lower 48". The folks at the visitor center decided to turn what might be considered a negative into a positive and have a "Saving the Best for Last" club. I don't know if Ferret signed in to become a "member" or not.



Best for Last

The visitor center also had the wood chipper used to dispose of Jean Lundegaard's body in the movie "Fargo". The 1996 Academy Award winning movie opens with a caption stating that the events portrayed are true. That had me wondering how the family of the actual murder victim felt about having a wood chipper displayed at the Fargo visitor center. It turns out that the story as told in "Fargo" is not a true story at all, but inspired by a murder that happened in Connecticut. Once I learned this, I stopped feeling guilty about having a picture of Cheryl shoving me into the chipper floating around the internet.


She seemed to enjoy this juuuust a little too much

170 or so miles due south awaited us after Fargo. My plan was to follow ND81 along the now-tiny Red River was thwarted by major road construction. 81 doesn't have much in the way of curves, but I thought it would be much more pleasant than US75 which in any case was on the Minnesota side of the Red River. The first stop would be Wahpeton, ND for the World's Largest Catfish. Then a lunch stop, a stop in Wheaton, MN for the World's Largest Mallard, and onto The Lantern Motel in Milbank, South Dakota, chosen by Cheryl because a) it looks cute b) it's right next door to The Lantern Supper Club and c) it was $50/night. Note: the preceding list is not necessarily presented in order of importance.


World's Largest Catfish


World's Largest Mallard (although folks in Alberta, Canada may dispute this claim)

The wind had picked up quite a bit and with it came heat. Any Canadian cool from the morning had escaped north and was replaced by Mexican or at least Texican heat from the south. My weather app said it was 98f at one point. The wind was strong and blowing at 30mph with nothing to block it. The fetch had to be 30 miles or more of farmland. In fact, there were stretches of road that went for miles without a single building, not even a silo or barn, to be found. I remember thinking about the vastness of the Great Plains. About how people came and tilled the soil, planted crops and built homes. About how those farmers and those that have followed for generations have fed half of the world for a century or more. It is magnificent, truly.


Long Lonesome Road


One of the few towns we passed along our trek south.

We spent probably 120 miles turning left on a straight road, the wind was that strong. I closed what vents I cold on my jacket to keep whatever moisture my body was generating from being blasted off of me immediately. I don't think it helped much. The "World's Largest" stops seemed like welcome respites from the heat and the wind, but no relief was to be had. It was if shade was suddenly banned. It was so hot that Ferret was actually comfortable.

In between the catfish and the mallard, was the town of Fairmount, ND. Fairmount sits not so majestically on the corner of ND127 and ND55. 55, according to Google Maps, had a "Welcome to North Dakota" sign so a left turn from 127 to 55 and a trip east for about a mile, .9 miles as it turns out, was needed for documentation purposes wind and heat or no wind and heat. Immediately after the turn, the orange sign said "Road Closed .8 Miles" My Nav route said it was .9 miles to the sign. I said to Cheryl in the communicator, "These construction guys never measure right" and off we went.



The road was closed at the bridge crossing the Bois de Sioux River which is the borderline between the two states, the Red River having given up that duty somewhere in or near Wahpeton. The roadbed on the other side of the "Closed" sign/barrier was black gravel, but it looked passable enough. The tough part would be getting around the barrier as the shoulder dipped immediately down into a drainage ditch. I inched my bike forward, hoping that I could sneak my lollipop mirrors in between the rungs of the barrier while keeping my Pirellis on sliver of flat between the edge of the barrier and the ditch. No luck. Perhaps a better rider could have navigated it, but this was not the place to test my skill. I backed out, looked at Ferret who had been riding right behind me for this whole day and gave him the palms-up shrug of hopelessness.

"You know, you could just move the barrier over a foot or two", shouted the Boy Scout.

"What?" I replied, not because I couldn't hear him, but because I was stunned at the suggestion coming from him.

"If you move the barrier over, we can get by", he repeated assuming that I was deaf and not in disbelief.

I dismounted and moved the barrier over a few feet. Ferret rode through carefully, Offroad, on his giant bike, navigated the 4' opening at something like 30 miles per hour. The other Boy Scout told me in my communicator that she was going to stay on the good side of the barrier, not because it was illegal, but because she was hot and tired and was in no mood to ride on gravel just for a photo op. Smart Boy Scout, that one.

We got a few pictures and headed on down the road.


At the Border with Ferret and Me


Artsy photo of Offroad off road (or at least off pavement)

It was just a long day and once we left Fargo behind, not a particularly enjoyable one. Memorable? Yes. It looked like it was going to storm as we got closer to Milbank. From Ortonville, MN to Milbank, we were on US12 heading south by southwest. In front of me the sky was brown. It looked like a dust storm in an old western. I never found out for sure, but I think there was a quarry near Milbank that was the cause of the dark sky in front of me. The dark sky behind me, though, was a little more concerning. Luckily, it was only 10 miles and we made it there without any further travails.


The rear view that kept me moving forward.

The owners of The Lantern Motel could not have been nicer. Their rooms could have been, though. Nothing awful, hallways were kind of dark, the rooms were kind of dated. Overall, it was worthy of the $50/night rate. The owners let us park our bikes up close to the building, two on each side of the main entrance, to protect them from the wind, which was still howling pretty good. We got ourselves unpacked, I think we all took showers to rinse off the length of the day and then headed across the parking lot to dinner.


Parked for the night

It turns out that the Lantern Supper Club was sold about two weeks before our arrival. The new owners have another restaurant in Big Stone called Sly's and this location is, by now, renamed "Sly's - Milbank". They were open and operating, but I believe we visited on the second day that they were re-opened. The food was fine, but service was a little slow and their bartender, while perfectly lovely, was not even sure how to make the simplest of cocktails with the exception of an old fashioned so after a bad attempt at a martini, I opted for the old fashioned. By this time Offroad and Ferret had headed back to the motel and Cheryl and I were at the bar talking with the locals. Everyone was very nice and they seemed very interested in our travels thus far. We asked the bartender if we could take our drinks back to the motel. She replied, "No, you can't take drinks outside. You can ask for your drink in a plastic cup, though, and there's not much I can do about it if you decide to leave when I'm not looking." So, I ordered another old fashioned in a plastic cup and Cheryl ordered a bottled beer and no glass.


Cheers!

[ul] [li]Day4 258 miles - A long day in the saddle that was memorable almost in spite of itself.
[/li][/ul] The next day would begin our trip back home. I am quite sure that we all slept well and wouldn't have slept any better had our rooms cost $500 per night.

Like bobbing for apples.

Who leaked? Somebody lose it laughing too hard?

Thank goodness no pumpkin seeds were spilled.