Double Dose -- Fargo to Devil's Lake, Devil's Lake to Rapid City

Gooood Evening!

As I stated in Tuesday's blog, I had no access to Internet yesterday, so you lucky readers get a double dose of 48 States 80 Days tonite. It has been a busy couple of days, with plenty to report from the road. Yesterday I drove from Fargo to Devil's Lake with more monotonous rolling hills and green pastures. It was a beautiful drive, but no spectacular geographical features to describe for you. The drive went fairly quickly -- Listened to an interesting Radio Lab feature about lying and deception. The production value for the show is always amazingly high, and this show was no different. The most interesting vignette was about a conwoman and her deceptive habits -- Again, if you're interested go here.

Arrived in Devil's Lake (the town) and grabbed a bite to eat at the Main Street Cafe, a little hole in the wall in this one horse town. The food was unremarkable, and not really worth photographing. After a quick stroll down main street, about 10 minutes at a turtles pace, I headed off to Devil's Lake (the campground) to set up camp and explore the area. Completely beautiful and unexpected: Something that I did not at all expect out of North Dakota. Water as far as the eye could see, and miles and miles of relatively undisturbed beach front. The rain that had previously been following me finally ceased, and I was able to really enjoy the natural beauty that the lake provided.

The night was also spectacular. Not only did the sun not set until well after 10:30, but after it was down, the stars glowed brightly until I laid my head down at about 12:15.  I awoke abruptly at about 5:15, looking around for the source of my wake up call. Turns out it was pouring down rain, and this guy neglected to put up the rain fly before bed.... Ooops... Soaking wet, I proceeded to clean up camp in about 1/3 the time it took me to establish it. Should be some kind of record, but I'll have to double check with the Guinness Book... I escaped relatively unscathed, except for the fact I had no plans of being up at the butt crack of dawn!

Today I had planned to travel to Bismarck and see a few sites, but with my early start, I arrived around 10:00 and the rain with still coming down. I made an executive decision to proceed on to my next destination, Rapid City, and forgo whatever I may have seen in Bismarck (which from what I read, is really not too much). This proved to be a good and bad decision. The drive proved to be much longer than I had expected (completely neglected the fact that I had to change time zones), but for the first time, I found some gorgeous scenery. These buttes came out of nowhere, and where gone before I knew it, but they definitely made me excited for beautiful topographic features that lay in store for me in the West!

Alright blogosphere -- Its getting to be that time again -- Its been a long exhausting day, and I have a busy day tomorrow. Getting up early to go see Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse (weather permitting) and then traveling on to Casper, WY.  Should be some great pics and info!

A.S. Bloom

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Egad! Almost forgot the food porn for the day! It wasn't conventionally delicious, but in a eerie sort of way the McGangBang was pretty good. Shout out to Matt B. for putting that silly idea in my head.