Posts Tagged With: Bismarck

2023 Trip 7: Northwest US, History & Adventure: Aug. 27

Posted on August 27, 2023 by Ed Heimel and Chris Klejbuk, MN travel bloggers; ckeh72@comcast.net
Cathedral of the Holy Spirit

Bismarck, ND August 27

10 AM Sunday service at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit was a surprise. A full house and about 40% of the attendees were children and teenagers. No special service, evidently just the usual crowd. We are more used to seeing the gray hairs vastly predominant.

The delicious caramel roll at Little Cottage Cafe

Our next surprise was breakfast at The Little Cottage Cafe. The line was out the door but we were assured the wait was worth it and the line would move quickly. All of the tables were for 2s and 4s. While waiting, we chatted a bit with two couples, one our age and one in their 20s and sat next to each other and the conversation continued. Major good advice: Order the caramel roll as an appetizer. We did and it was fantastic; sweet with extra caramel, warm, soft and fluffy, not heavy like some others are. The entire breakfast was tasty and inexpensive. Put it on your list next time you are in Bismarck.

Another bit of advice was to visit the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum. We had it on our secondary list in case we finished the State Capitol tour early. We decided to move it up and visit the Capitol second. Wise choice, as we got to the museum, we were informed the Capitol tours were not being held this weekend due to repairs-even though the Capitol web site had not mentioned that.

Native American drum with four colors of the medicine wheel

The Heritage Center and Museum was either new or recently renovated. The displays were well done with a nice mix of new technology and old style but new display boards. The information presented covered an extensive catalog of topics; obviously not comprehensively but reasonably thorough. The information on Native Americans was substantial.

We re-learned ND’s legacy of fighting the early domination of the state by railroads and wheat magnates out of Minneapolis. ND’s geologic history lead to several exhibits about fossils, bison, and dinosaurs. Agriculture, coal, and fracking were several hot topics also.

North Dakota is an immigrant state and the pattern of immigrants from European countries forming their own enclaves and keeping their heritage alive was discussed, although I did not observe any displays of Indian boarding schools and their negative impact on Indian cultures.

Admission to the museum is free so people are able to come back often. I find it more and more difficult to retain much of the new information I pick up at museums but I keep trying.

Lewis and Clark Riverboat

An afternoon cruise on the Missouri River was next on our agenda. The Missouri has been frequently dammed in ND, SD, and MT, creating water recreation opportunities. Pontoon boats were the most numerous type of vessels we observed. Our excursion boat could probably seat 150 people and was about one-half full.

This section of the Missouri River is part of the Northern Plains National Heritage Area. National Heritage Areas are created by Congress and coordinated with the National Park Service. They are not an official unit of NPS. My personal interpretation is that these are local efforts to market their communities tying into the cachet of the National Park Service. The official verbiage is: Through public-private partnerships, NHA entities support historic preservation, natural resource conservation, recreation, heritage tourism,and educational projects.

I think the people on the boat were just having a relaxing boat ride. However, there was a recorded narration on the cruise lasting about 20 minutes. If you listened to it, you heard most of the presentation expressing the Native American perspective of the dams on the Missouri. Creation of the dams led to to the destruction of the Indian villages that had been up and down the Missouri River. One statement was: “ my birthplace is 20 feet below the surface of the river”.

As we left the boat, we came across a large mural. It was a project just completed that had as its goal to bring together partners within the National Heritage Area to share stories about how and why the Missouri River was and continues to be meaningful. Some of the themes included the role of immigrant settler women in agriculture, the state flower (Prairie Rose) and state bird (the Meadowlark), role of cottonwood trees, the river as a source of life, and the three tribes of the area (Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa).

On a related note, some of the words from languages used in the area for river are: Fluss (German), Elv (Norwegian), Mnishoshe (Lakota), Joki (Finnish), and Maatahe (Mandan).

View from overlook-Chief Looking Village Park

Before dinner, we finished up the day by driving to an overlook on the bluffs overlooking the river for a beautiful view of the Missouri. Dinner was at The Lodge, a nearby restaurant recommended by our brunch companions.

Ed and Chris Bismarck Aug.27

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2023 Trip 7: Northwest US, History and Adventure: Aug. 26

Posted on August 26, 2023 by Ed Heimel and Chris Klejbuk, MN travel bloggers; ckeh72@comcast.net

Bismarck, ND Saturday August 26, 2023

We are back on the road for an extensive seven week road trip. This started out as a planned trip to Idaho, a state we have only visited minimally. As time went on, we added parts of Oregon and northern California, as well as a few more stops in Montana. If the federal government does not shut down on October 1, we will spend two nights in Yellowstone National Park and two nights in Badlands National Park. The end result is the map you see above.

Regular readers of the blog will know that we are seeking to visit most of the 420+ units of the National Park Service. Currently we are over 320 and this trip should add 15 more units that are new to us.

We had to schedule our time for this trip with sufficient days to be able to see the critical items on our list. In addition, we wanted to make sure we could get into the Minnesota State Fair before we left on our journey. That was accomplished by going to the fair on its opening day, Thursday, two days ago. I managed to fit in a volunteer stint with Mississippi National River And Recreation Area from 10 to 2. The rest of the time was spent eating and wandering the fairgrounds with Chris.

Interstate 94 to the North Dakota/Minnesota border was a routine run. Starting west from Fargo, we were back on an interstate highway we have not visited for probably eight or nine years. The terrain was similar to the North Dakota plains we passed through on our trip to Winnipeg in the middle of July, without any fields of canola. And, despite the fact that North Dakota has less than 100 dairy farms, milk is the designated state beverage. All of the cows we saw on the farms along the highway looked like beef cattle, not dairy cattle.

We decided to break up the day’s journey with a stop in Jamestown North Dakota. Jamestown is a community of about 15,000 people with a kitschy tourist attraction called Heritage Village/ National Buffalo Museum. You can tell the attraction is older, since it still uses the term of buffalo rather than bison in its name. However, within the museum itself, it utilizes space to explain the difference between the bison of North America and the water buffalo of Asia.

We picked up a few new factoids about bison. For instance, I had not remembered that there are two types of bison in North America. The plains bison are primarily found in the United States. The wood bison are primarily found in Canada and are 10 to 15% larger than bison found in the U.S. Nor did I remember that bison only require water every three or four days. I was pleased to see that the museum, while not highlighting the fact, did at least make it known that the killing of bison was also a tactic to subjugate Native Americans.

Lucky for us we have seen bison in numerous locations around the United States. The bison at the museum, according to one staff member, generally leave the area of the museum around the time visitors arrive at the door, and return from wooded areas after the visitors have left. For over fifty years, the museum has had a sculpted 26 foot tall, 60 ton bison on display outside. Of course, we got a picture of it.

Heritage Village is a collection of pioneer day buildings, and businesses. The general store was doing a brisk business by the selling of ice cream and had a seven piece band playing on the porch outside the store. Heritage village even had a stage coach ride and pony rides for the young in age and size. I had to take a picture and send it to my sisters. We used to assist neighbors with Shetland pony rides when we kids were young.

By this time, we were ready to head out and so left the Buffalo Museum thinking to stop at a wildlife refuge prior to stopping in Bismarck. 2/3 of the way to the wildlife refuge we decided enough was enough, and just continued on to our Airbnb where we will stay in Bismarck for two nights. Dinner was takeout from a local grocery store.

Ed and Chris, Bismarck ND 8/26/23

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