After Minneapolis I got back on the bus and headed up to Fargo. The only thing I knew about Fargo before arriving was the 1996 film of that name, which I hadn't even seen. I watched it on my first night in town and so "I saw Fargo in Fargo" is now a statement with which I will be annoying people for decades to come. Those of you who've seen the film may be interested to know that the woodchipper - THE WOODCHIPPER - has pride of place in Fargo's tourist information centre. See picture.
Other than the woodchipper, there isn't really much of interest in Fargo. So I picked up a rental car and headed out into the wide open spaces, which in North Dakota are very wide and very open indeed. You can drive for hours and hours without seeing a major city or even a major intersection. Gas (as in petrol) prices have come down slightly of late: on average this week I've been paying $3.90 per US gallon, which works out at about £1.26 a litre. It's pretty good compared to back in the UK, but the American public are still up in arms about how expensive it is.
Annoyingly, after several days of uninterrupted blazing sunshine amid the strip malls and parking lots of Fargo, the weather turned overcast as soon as I got out into the countryside. Nonetheless at Theodore Roosevelt National Park I had a pleasant little hike, which was briefly interrupted by a bison parking itself on the trail ahead of me. Bison are placid creatures, and of course they're herbivores, so they represent very little danger provided that you keep your distance. Unfortunately this particular bison was steadfastly refusing to move, and it was paying me uncomfortably close attention. There was nobody else around, and no alternative path back to my car.
So I went off the path and skirted round the top of a little cliff-edge to the east: the drop-off of the cliff wasn't steep enough to be dangerous to me, but it was just about steep enough for a charging bison to go tumbling down and not come back up, provided I could get out of the way quickly enough. That was the idea, anyway. Fortunately I didn't get charged and so my matador skills were not tested.
All this excitement will continue in the next blog, and there are no prizes for guessing which US state comes next after North Dakota.
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| Downtown Fargo |
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| From the film "Fargo"... the woodchipper. |
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| Theodore Roosevelt National Park, seen from Sperati Point |
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| Bison are totally mellow around cars but they get antsy around pedestrians (see blog). So I stayed in the car for this picture. |
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| Theodore Roosevelt National Park again. Note the crappy weather. |
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| Medora, ND This is a wall in the gents toilet in the souvenir shop / grocery store. Naturally I am unable to confirm if the ladies toilet was similarly decorated. |
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| In Fargo - another cosy quiet suburban AirBnB |
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| Edd vs Food #104 Big Brother Burrito from the Taco Bros truck in downtown Fargo. Lovely bit of honesty on their menu: "All Chicken Contains Pork" |
