For Pompano

Roger, we love the Dakotas and we LOVED coming across this town, a farming center with a sense of humor. Maybe you know the story of this place with this fancy community yard art.

The welcome sign that made me think about Dr. Strangelove.



This wild, crazy and wonderful structure. It took us a few good looks to realize all of these were moving weather vanes.



BTW-- camped in the Northern and the Southern units of the Roosevelt NP --- LOVED it even though it rained most of the time and most of the scenic road in the north unit was closed due to a severe road problem. We thought about attending the Medora Musical, but it was REALLY raining.

Quote: Originally posted by Santiago

Does the wind blow often in ND?

Does it ever NOT blow in the plain states.

It's like WyldOming; sometimes it blows in the OTHER direction....

Talk about a sense of humor

If you head down to South Dakota make sure you check out the Crazy Horse Memorial under construction between Custer and Hill City:



When it's complete this is the view that Crazy Horse will have of Mt. Rushmore 17 miles away:

Hi Dianne, please excuse my tardy reply, but was detained by some doctors who think they know best on how I should spend my time.

I'll spend some now to try to answer and explain about the 'yard art' at Bowman,North Dakota and that area....with photos naturally.

Incidentally, you are, or were, in a part of ND that I know very well..Bowman, Amidon, Rhame, and the vast National Grasslands Region..



where deer and antelope do freely roam in large numbers - near to the highest point at White Butte that we climbed many times when my Dad took us camping and first instructed us about rattlesnakes - dinosaur fossil exhibits everywhere..

Co-pilot is impressed.


I'm a mere mouthful..


- along with some ancient burning coal veins that caught fire thousands of years ago. All bordering the Badlands, that whole corner of the state is an outdoorsman's and naturalist's heaven...and where I spent the first part of my life and still return to the old homestead.

I was going to suggest camping south of Medora on the Little Missouri River at a place called Sully's Camp, full of history and shady cottonwoods where you might find my initials carved...but I sense you are on your way to South Dakota and the Black Hills (Mt. Rushmore)? If so, you're on Hwy 85 and one of the best routes to those beautiful hills and forests.





As to Bowman, glad you enjoyed the 'FOLK ART' popping up, especially in western ND, showing how folk art brings a face to that certain identity of the West with it's "hard years," at times depicting political and religious persecution, and wars. That is part of what has been happening all over the area..promoting tourism of course, as ND is considered the least visited state, but also these monuments are the artist's intent to express himself, and quite often done with a laugh-at-yourself humor. A lot of 'metal' folk art is not surprising, as almost every North Dakotan..and ALL our ranchers & farmers know how to weld and create from scratch. It comes with the turf.

People on the plains have been defined according to the expectations of people elsewhere, and only recently have begun to say for themselves who they are.

To live in ND, it helps to have a sense of humor. Remember how everybody hated "Fargo" until it got all those Oscar nominations, and then the folks in Fargo celebrated Oscar night by setting up a wood chipper on Broadway? Hardships of the north teach you that nothing is as good for you as a good laugh.

One ex-governor had this huge billboard erected on the ND-Montana border on Interstate 94. It read.."Thinking of Leaving ND? Custer Did.."

If the media's dire depopulation predictions are true, North Dakota will soon have less residents than giant concrete and metal creatures. You betcha, there are many quirky attractions in North Dakota. Spunky North Dakotans say "BITE ME!" to out-of-touch urban doomsayers, with their weepy laments of prairie beauty. There's no better example of ND-can-do spirit than monuments similar to what you saw outside Bowman...like the nearby Enchanted Highway, on I-94 and beyond. Huge metal exhibits depicting typical ND themes, like snowshoes, sandhill cranes, pheasants, migrating geese, Teddy Roosevelt, UFOs, bison, beef, a milk cow, tribal life, and even a giant spider web crawling with metal arachnids. I still smile when I come across them.

"If you build it, they will come"...might have been the original thought, but the fact is, lots of folks would rather just keep it quiet. They've been to the high population worlds, you see..

Eric Severeid, of Velva, North Dakota, and a famous CBS News commentator, was often quoted for his remark that North Dakota is "a large rectangular blank spot in the nation's mind." Most of us North Dakotans keep a regular catalog of such slights, including:

Like Jeff Foxworthy would have said:

"You might be a North Dakotan if . . ."

If you define summer as three months of bad sledding..
If you've ever lost a bit of tongue on a frozen metal pole...
If your definition of a small town is one that doesn't have a bar . . .
If you can identify a Minnesota accent . . .
If "down south" to you means Aberdeen, SD . . .
If you have no problem spelling "Wahpeton" . . .
If you have an ICBM in your back yard . . .
If you have as many Canadian coins in your pockets as American ones . . .
If your kids' baseball and softball games have ever been snowed out . . .
If you drive 70 mph on the highway and pass on the right . . .
If at least 50% of your relatives smell like beets . . .
If you don't understand what the big deal about Moorhead is . . .
If people borrow things to you . . .
If you have ever served glorified rice at a wedding reception . . .
If you refer to the state just east of you as "The People's Republic of Minnesota" . . .
If you expect to be excused from school for deer season . . .
If the soup du jour at your home-town cafe is always beer cheese or knoephla . . .
If you like to send liberal Democrats to Congress and rock-ribbed Republicans to the statehouse . . .
If your favorite hors d'oeuvre is little weenies and barbeque sauce in a crockpot . . .
If you refer to the blessed union of an ELCA Lutheran and a Missouri-Synod Lutheran as a "mixed marriage" . . .
If you'd like to laugh at this, but you're afraid someone will notice you . . .

And as for that Great Plains WIND....

North Dakota is a leading U.S. state in wind power generation, producing 6.34 billion kilowatt-hours, 17.5 percent of all state generated electricity in 2014. A great-paying investment in a renewable and reliable resource...works for me. Wind has been a tool on the plains for a long, long time.



If you've ever experienced a full-blown prairiestorm, then you know the joys of survival.




And that's why you see that Welcome collage outside of Bowman, ND and other small places.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your trip..but I already know you will.


May the wind be always at your back.

[Edited on 6-7-2015 by Pompano]

Good choice on heading south, Diane. Say Hi to the sandhill country of Nebraska for me. Plus, I love hunting greenheads in those Nebraska cornfields!

Some thoughts to comment on.....We have something in common with pioneer relatives and sod houses. A relative named Omund Opheim built the first permanent home in Griggs County, ND in 1879, where it was restored and now sits at the county seat. Before that the family of 6 lived in a sod house. They had come to the Dakota Indian Territory by ox-cart from the Ohio Valley. I can imagine what life was like living in a sod house during a ND winter. Whew, thanks to my folks, we had solid walls and no goats grazing on our roof!



The worsening crowding at all of our national parks defines our growing population's participation in tourism. The parks are being overwhelmed, it seems. Like you, we avoid most nowadays except for late fall or winter if it's open. I grew up very near Roosevelt Natl Park when it was never crowded and indeed, a stranger met while camping was a unique event.

The oil boom has brought many changes....some good, some bad.

Geologists first discovered oil here in 1951, but it took the recent spike in gas prices and new technology to make drilling economical. It is calculated two millionaires were made each day during the peak years.

It's the good, the bad and the ugly, The good is the guy with seven wells who's a millionaire in 24 hours. The bad are those who own the land but not the minerals underneath, and whose roads are tore up and they're not getting anything. And the ugly is the disruption of the environment. Add this to the ugly.. I don't like what the oil boom has done to the relaxed way of small-town life and the disappearance of wildlife from the area. Heavy trucks churn up the countryside which was once reserved for coyotes, deer, elk, and pronghorns.

There are still dozens of ghost towns, but oil was starting to populate the prairie again.

Of course, it makes for great employment with high-paying jobs. Ten oil-patch counties have grown as workers stream in or natives stick around for jobs that pay an average $80,000 annually, more than double the non-industry wage, according to our state employment office reports. Small country cafes, like the Palermo Bar & Grill, the only one in the nearly deserted town of the same name, are often packed these days. I've ate lunch with water-tanker drivers who made 10-12 thousand a month just shifting gears. The state created the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. All that was/is required is a desire to work, which unfortunately a lot of Americans just don't want to do these days. Seems like a kind of flu?

All this is slowing down today, however. The glory days are over, barrel prices are down world-wide, and everything is trying to return to normal..meaning no new jobs, affordable housing becoming more available, product prices lowering. North Dakota just might survive the oil boom after all.


And that's all I have to day about that...for now.