On to North Dakota

The first order of business this morning was to go in to town and get our mail.  Terri gave me the form to fill out for my driver's license so I would be prepared once I got to the licensing agency.  We then went over a block and registered our vehicles for another year.  The price went up but it is still less than a tenth of what we would have paid in Maine.  We returned to the campground and were able to get our camping receipt.

Besides the campground, Prairie Village has a dozen or so old houses and public buildings from the eighteen hundreds that are open to the public for a fee but included in our camping fee.  There are also barns full of old farming equipment and various other antiques.  Although not as well preserved as some places, it would be an interesting place to explore.  We, however, have not taken or had the time to do so in the two times we have stayed here.  While Ted was emptying our tanks at the dump station, I walked around and looked in a few.  They are full of interesting old antiques and the houses were set up as they might have been well over a hundred years ago.  There is also a train that runs in a circle around the large grounds which also border a lake.

We drove about an hour north to Brookings to get my driver's license which was a pretty painless operation.  There were only two people ahead of me and it didn't take long as I had all my ducks in a row.  Besides information required by the new federal laws to prevent identity fraud, they require additional affidavits and information from full-timers but I had all that and then some with me.  As we were leaving the parking lot, I took a couple of pictures of some of the trees that were in bloom.  This is a sample of what we have been seeing along the way.

Besides the rich farmland, the area north of Madison had a lot of lakes beside the road and often we were on causeways crossing the lakes.  We figure the land is so flat that the lakes must be pretty shallow.  On the lakes were dozens of white pelicans.  They are much, much larger than their brown cousins that we saw everyday in Florida.  They have black tipped wings when they fly and are really a magnificent bird.  The other "bird" was some kind of insect that covered our large windshield with splotches.  All my photos of the day are dotted with their presence.  It took some heavy scrubbing from Ted whenever we stopped for fuel.  They were even worse that Florida's love bugs which can be pretty bad.

Except for the frequent lakes, the terrain in South Dakota remained much as we have seen throughout the midwest.  Once we were in North Dakota, a new state for Ted, the land began to slowly rise until we were in rougher terrain with many small hills that were rocky.  It is what my seventh grade teacher called "knob and kettle topography".  I don't know why that stuck with me but there it is.  Once we reached the top of the ridge, we pulled out at a rest area.  From the top, we could see for miles down into the valley that flattened out below.  

   

One of the signs talked about the effects of the ice age on the area.  Before the last ice age, the Missouri River ran north and emptied into Hudson Bay. The sheets of ice blocked and redirected the river which now empties into the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico.  Selecting any photo will enlarge, this one tells of the Missouri.

Holiday weekends are always a challenge trying to find places to stay.  Ted had picked out a campground about halfway between Madison and Devil's Lake but when he called the campground at Grahams Island State Park in Devil's Lake, they said there were only a few sites left.  We continued on driving, crossing the three mile causeway with dead trees covered in cormorants and people fishing, arriving around 9:00 after 435 miles today.  It was still daylight and the park was still open so we were able to get a site.  We are facing the lake although some distance from it.  The campground is grassy with a lot of trees.  None of the trees have leaves, however, as it is still early spring here.  We are at a latitude that is higher than the northern most tip of Maine.  After a few photos of the sunset and a really late dinner, we spent our first night in North Dakota.