Minot to Devil's Lake
True to our word, we got up and went straight to the Norwegian Church. It was pretty. It was part of a Norwegian Heritage Park. It was next to the tourist information centre we wanted to go to. That was shut until noon.
To kill time, then, we went to Wal-Mart, to stock up on car snacks, insect bite cream, an enormous suitcase to take back all the tat we're buying, and such and such. The last Wal-Mart we went to genuinely felt like a big Asda, and this was a bit of a disappointment: further evidence of the way the world is becoming more and more homogenous. Today's Wal-Mart had a twist: barely any food supplies -- milk and a few snacks, yes, but no fresh fruit and veg, no cans, nothing like that -- just stationary, small appliances, luggage, car parts, toys, bikes, clothes, guns, flat-pack furniture, homewares, bags, health and beauty products, garden products, and such and such.
Laden down with our frivolous purchases, we returned to the tourist information centre, which was by now open. The Norwegian church was also now open, so we got to have a look inside. This was when we really got to enjoy the North Dakota accent, as we eavesdropped on a conversation between two old Dakotans. Fargo wasn't exaggerating after all! Yes, Fargo is set in Minnesota, but Fargo itself is in North Dakota.
We ate at Hardee's. It's another chain burger joint, but it was very nice indeed. Hardee's shares its grinning star emblem with another burger joint -- Carl's Jr. Carl's Jr. peters out as you move East, as Hardee's gets more common. Debbie has vowed to make it her business to find out what this is all about.
Our task for the afternoon was to see the giant tractor tyre turtle, forty miles or so North of US-2. We looked where it was meant to be, but we never saw it, but we were compensated by a different giant turtle in Bottineau. Turtle Mountain, to the North, explains all this, by the way.
Back on US-2, we hit Rugby. It's not a bit like the real Rugby. It's quite nice, in fact. It also claims to be the "geographical centre of North America", meaning the centre of gravity if the continent is assumed to have constant thickness and density. There's a cairn to mark it.
We also passed though York (pop: 26) and Leeds (pop: 464) before reaching Devil's Lake, where we pulled in at the first motel we saw, because it looked cool.
Our very pleasant room is costing $32 for the night. It's about time we found a bargain motel. Last night's cost a fair amount. Road Trip USA says of Minot: "(except perhaps during the state fair) you shouldn't have trouble finding a place to sleep". As part of the state fair celebrations, we could have gone to see Huey Lewis perform...
One of the things we bought in Wal-Mart today was an AT&T calling card. This is meant to allow me to make long-distance calls from motel rooms with only a local call as far as the motel's phone system is concerned. It took me ages to get it working. The way it works is, you call a free number, then you follow prompts: press 1 for English instructions, 2 for Spanish; enter your card number; etc. It's all time-sensitive, so to get the modem dialler to do it took lots and lots of fine-tuning of the dial script. I hope that now it works, it'll work in other motels as well.
After getting that working, we went out to try and find some food. We kerb-crawled around the town, and were losing hope. We got out of the car to look around on foot, and as we peered at a shopfront that looked halfway between open and closed, a grizzled old local drawled at us: "that must be that new restaurant in town", so we went in. Immediately, a Chinese woman said "You want buffet?" and before we knew it we were seated. It was all you can eat for $7.75. We ate all we could. The chopstick wrapper read (verbatim):
Welcome to Chinese Restaurant.
Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks
the traditional and typical of Chinese glonous history
and cultual.
Meanwhile, on TV, all the news channels are tremendously excited about nine miners who've been trapped underground since Wednesday, and were all rescued today.