World United States North Dakota Casselton

Rick and Gail's USA Adventures

Casselton, North Dakota Oct 13, 2008

Monday, October 13, 2008 We were quite busy while staying in Salem, South Dakota as we saw the National Music Museum, Spirit Mound, the Falls at Sioux Falls, Ingalls Homestead, Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, and the Corn Palace. We could really tell fall was in full swing! It was 42˚, cloudy, and still very windy when we left Camp America. At least it wasn’t raining! At 9:38 am we were going south on US 81. Then we merged onto I-90 East and at Exit 396B we merged onto I-29 North. On the internet there are sites that tell where truck stops are on the freeways where we could purchase diesel. Rick found one that was at Exit 109 off I-29. Even though we couldn’t see the truck stop we went off at the exit. There had been a sign for it before the exit. Rick thought it was suppose to be about 1 mile from the freeway. It wasn’t and there weren’t any places to turn around. Truck stops are usually huge. We couldn’t figure out how we could have missed it!?!?! We decided to continue to drive on SD 34 to Madison, and then turned right onto US 212 east, which took us back onto I-29 at Watertown. Before we drove onto I-29 we finally stopped for diesel and got 6.1 mpg. UGH!!! Just north of milepost 234 we went over the Continental Divide. Eventually we crossed into North Dakota, our 45th state. About 5 miles into North Dakota we stopped at a rest area for lunch. It was mostly sunny!!! The roads continued to be very rough in some places. We had seen a lot of fields of drying sunflowers. They were brown and looked quite wilted. When I looked up on the internet to make sure that this was what we were seeing, I found out that when they looked like this the seeds are “fat and juicy”. Most of the sunflowers are used for sunflower oil or meal. The oil is used for cooking and the meal is used for animal feed. Other sunflowers are grown to produce seeds that are “roasted and salted and eaten as snacks”. Next we merged onto I-94 West. This took us by Fargo. We saw a Microsoft complex. At Exit 63B we drove onto ND 18 and immediately turned left onto Governors Drive. We had arrived at Governors’ Inn and Conference Center RV Park in Casselton, North Dakota at 3:00 pm. It was mostly sunny with strong winds. We had driven 303 miles. Our problem with the truck stop had only added 18 miles. Rick registered at the Inn. They had had 4 days of heavy rains so there was flooding around, but not in, the RV Park. Thankfully they had a side entrance that was on higher ground. Setting up went smoothly and we locked on manually. Even though it wasn’t a “fancy” park, it was quiet. Rick called our “home” campground, Travel Inn in Elma, WA and made reservations for 2 weeks in November. We get to stay there free. Later in the evening we were knocked off the internet. The modem system page said the connection was degraded. By the time we went to bed it was quite chilly!!! We decided to set the furnace to come on at 58˚.

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