September 13: Would you like some lutefisk with that, Thor?

[mmegaera]

What a pretty day. Seriously. My first stop of the day was at Detroit Lake, which is the centerpiece of the eponymously named town of Detroit Lakes (no, I didn’t see the other lakes, but that’s okay).

I’m still seeing wildflowers even in September in this climate, too, which makes me happy.

Sunflowers and asters at Detroit Lakes.

Across far western Minnesota.

I reached Moorhead, Minnesota, on the North Dakota line, around noon, and went looking for [googles to get the spelling right] the Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center, which is nominally the local historical society, but in fact is the home of two enormous fascinating artifacts. The first is a sort of Thor-Heyerdahl-in-reverse authentic Viking ship reproduction that was built nearby, then sailed from Duluth, Minnesota, to Oslo, Norway, back in the early 1980s. I was a fan of Heyerdahl when I was a kid, so the story of Robert Asp and his dream becoming a reality was fascinating to me, and the ship was impressive, if difficult to photograph.

The outside of the museum.

The viking ship, and now you see why the odd roof [g].

The other huge artifact is a reproduction stave (pronounced, to my surprise, as STAHV, not STAYV) church. It’s an exact copy, made by another local man, Guy Paulsen, of the Hopperstad Stave Church, built during the 12th and 13th centuries in the backwoods of Norway. I’d always wanted to see a stave church, after seeing pictures and film of them, and since I’ll be lucky if I ever get to any part of Scandinavia in this lifetime, well, I jumped at the chance to see this one.

The stave church.

The front door. Look at all that beautiful hand-carved wood.

It smells like my father’s workshop in there. They do use the building as a wedding venue. Can you imagine a cooler place to get married?

Looking up at the inside of the ceiling.

The museum has the usual local history exhibits, too, but aside from the church and the ship, the temporary exhibits were what caught my eye. One was a traveling exhibit about the history of the education of the blind, and the other was about the history of liquor in the area. Apparently because North Dakota’s liquor laws were much stricter than Minnesota’s, and due to its proximity to non-Prohibitioned Canada, Moorhead was a very exciting place to be in the early decades of this century [g].

This is probably the most amusing image from the liquor exhibit, a guy dressed up as a can of beer.

The museum’s café sells a mean bowl of vegetable beef soup with homemade noodles, too. No lutefisk, though, thank goodness.

Crossing the Red River of the North from Minnesota to North Dakota, and from Moorhead to Fargo.

There wasn’t really anything I wanted to see in Fargo itself (as opposed to Moorhead), so I drove on through and out onto the Great Plains. I’m back in, “Oh, god, don’t anything step on my van! It’s really not a bug even though it looks as small as one!” country, and I am so happy about that. Oh, my gosh, I love the prairies. They’re so gorgeous.

And I got an interesting history lesson when I stopped at a rest area on my way to my stop for the night in Jamestown, too. I knew a little about tree claims, from reading my Laura Ingalls Wilder, but not this much. Too cool.

I don’t normally take photos of rest areas, but these cottonwoods were part of a tree claim.

Self-explanatory [g]. Interesting, huh?

I loved these clouds,. They almost look like they’re whirling, but they’re not. And look at the size of that *sky.*

Jamestown’s claim to fame is the world’s largest statue of a bison. I’ll go see if I can find it tomorrow morning.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.