8. August 14-travel and look around day

Wow! Someone once told me that North Dakota had a whole lot of nothing between point A and point B. Boy!, whoever said that knew their stuff!

There are TONS of Sunflowers all along the highways. Carpets of Yellow is a cliche but very apt.

Miles of yellow. Fantastic!

Anyhow, we left the Hirschey's house in Glenwood fairly early and headed north to Bemidji, MN to see the Paul Bunyan and Big Blue statues by Lake Bemidji. We have seen pictures of the two icons but in real life they are something to see. Whoever created the marketing plan in 1937 to generate tourist traffic really knew their stuff.

Pretty Big....

Paul Bunyan, Big Blue and two of the 3,000 tourists at the Visitor Center

 On our way north to see Paul and his ox, we stopped at a Cheese Shop/License store. (Yes, in Minnesota, you can buy your car license plates in cheese shops. Makes sense to me :))

We had the cheese shop lady make up two sandwiches for us to have for lunch along the road as we traveled toward North Dakota. These roadside stops are turning out to be really nice as a break in the ride without hitting a fast food junk shop.

Roadside stop with one of the MN 10,000 lakes in the distance

Daily stats:

• 486 miles driven
• 8 hours 22 minutes

We got to Minot, ND about 6:00 PM and checked into a Hampton Inn. We are finding the Hampton Inn's to be really nice.

Found a local brewery for dinner, the Souris River Brewing company. There were couples having dinner on both sides of us with one couple providing driving directions for the next day and the other couple hailing from Pennsylvania and Buffalo, NY. Seems the lady was from Buffalo NY and knew lots of the same locations we did. Made for a very nice dinner. And very nice beer too!

Tomorrow we are off heading west and a bit south to see the oil fields of North Dakota, Lake Sakakawea, and hopefully end up near Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the lower SW edge of North Dakota.  Weather reports are not encouraging rain-wise. Ugh.