We awoke to a beautiful morning at Chain of Lakes Recreation Area:

I love RV breakfasts:

As we prepared to leave, we stowed the leveling blocks we had parked on and found this fellow living inside:

It’s a Tiger Salamader:

So long:

We drove west, the phrase “God’s country” coming to mind:

Our first stop of the day was the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Washburn, North Dakota:

The museum was very well done:

This air rifle is the same type used by the Corps of Discovery to impress Indian tribes they encountered:

This journal clasp was removed from one of Lewis or Clark’s journals from their expedition, which lasted from 1804 to 1806:

M tried on a buffalo robe:

Thirty years after Lewis and Clark’s expedition, Prince Maximilian of Wied led an ethnographic expedition to chronicle the then-rapidly-disappearing Native American culture:

It’s cold out there on the prairie:

We visited nearby Fort Mandan, where Lewis and Clark wintered in 1804-1805 before continuing west.  The original fort’s site was submerged with one of the Missouri River’s frequent shifts in channel.  This recreated fort is near the original site:

We continued west to Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, where Lewis and Clark dropped off Sacagawea on their way back from the Pacific Coast:

A recreated Hidatsa earth lodge:

The visitor center included this Bull boat

We continued west for a plant tour of the Great Plains Synfuels plant:

After viewing a video about the coal gasification process, which breaks down coal into simpler compounds which are then reconstituted into an array of useful fuels and products, we viewed the 1:32 scale model of the plant that was used to build the actual plant.  The model covers 1200 square feet and was built by eight engineers over two years at a cost of eight million dollars:

Note the plant employee in the control room:

The tour was fascinating!  Outside, the actual plant:

We continued west to visit the northern unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which preserves a portion of North Dakota’s badlands in an area which shaped the pro-conservation attitudes of then-rancher Teddy Roosevelt.  The visitor center was closed, so we left the RV in the parking lot and drove the scenic drive out into the badlands:

Longhorn cattle were reintroduced here to recreate the landscape as Teddy Roosevelt experienced it when he owned a ranch in this area:

Great views from the overlooks:

I love the wide-open vistas of the American West:

Bison in the distance:

This area of the park has the largest concretions we’ve ever seen, much larger than the Moki Marbles we saw in Utah:

Huge concretions!

We left the park, briefly driving south:

A few minutes later, we arrived at the Forest Service’s Summit Campground, which now operates as a dispersed camping location:

This campground is not very well known:

Falafel for dinner:

Good night from west-central North Dakota!  See the alternating light blue line on the trip map for today’s drive.

We had a pleasant Shabbos visiting Tricia’s sister.  No-one is in a rush here, the town is well kept, and with houses here available for well less than one hundred thousand dollars, it seems almost too good to be true:

B said her farewells to the dog:

We stopped at the grocery store on the way out of town and admired the mural on the wall:

We drove west and entered Iowa:

We stopped at Effigy Mounds National Monument:

The Monument preserves burial mounds, some of which are effigy mounds, which are burial mounds that are shaped like animals.  The mounds are estimated to have been constructed between 600CE and 1250CE.  We checked out the visitor center:

We hiked up the trail leading to a group of mounds.  Along the way we looked out over the Mississippi River:

The trail skirted a series of mounds on the left:

This is an animal effigy mound.  It’s hard to tell, but the body is in the background and the legs are coming into the foreground:

The kids think they’re too old to do the Junior Ranger program, so we did it together:

We continued north and west to Minneapolis, where we will be visiting my brother and parents.

See the alternating light blue line on the trip map for today’s drive.

Trish had painted this cork board black some time ago for use as a display board for the kids’ Junior Ranger badges.  I took M’s badges and got to work, but only 180 of his 322 badges and patches fit on the board:

We received three Junior Ranger badges by mail today.  The kids had submitted the workbooks for the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail by mail:

We visited Hamilton Grange National Memorial on Day 785.  11 Months later, the kids received their badges:

The kids received the Midwest Region badge for completing the NPS Midwest Archeological Center Junior Ranger workbook: