Cobblestone Hotel, Bottineau ND

I got up around 4 am and couldn't sleep so I read a bit and then slept until almost 7 am. Then I got up, showered and got some breakfast.  There was a youngish man chatting with the front desk person...on and on...but he reported a problem with the tub shower head, so I thought while they were at it, I would tell them about the bathroom fan that made put, put noises unless you let it run - which I did ...all night.  I tried to turn down the cold air, but did not succeed.  I didn't tell them about that or that there was no kleenex in the box.  Oh, well.  Hampton Inns can't be perfect, can they?  My suite was very spacious.

I looked at the map and am off to ND and the International Peace Garden.  The forecast for here is rain today and into Friday I think.  I guess I will see what is happening westward.  I went to the car to drop off my clothes bag and smelled smoke again.  They think it is from fires in Canada.

Before I left Warroad, I wanted to take a few photos of Lake of the Woods so I drove back a block and then to the lakeshore park I had seen before.  It was overcast and I wasn't too optimistic about the quality of the photos but I ran around taking them anyway.   As I crossed to another path, I heard someone yell out, "Hey, Come here."  Pretty presumptuous.  It was a gray-bearded fellow in a transport van of some sort, named Mart.  He saw me with my camera and concluded that I was not from around these parts otherwise I would not be taking photos of their poor lake.  It is actually a very big lake shared with Canada.  He asked where I was from and what I was doing there.  I gave him my spiel.  We talked about covid.  He thinks people will be afraid of getting close to other people from now on...forever.  He thinks  too much was made of covid.  He got 2 shots of vaccine but will not be getting a booster.  Neither will the guy in the car parked next to him.  "They just want to control us."  I found out more about MN weather - according to Mart, it get to -30F in the winter with a -20 high during the day.  All the cars have cables running from them to heat them so they will start.  Sounds pretty bleak.  It was chillier today, but Mart prefers this weather - when it got to the 100s a few weeks ago, he nearly died. Seems to me there was more conversation after that, but then I excused myself to finish taking my photos and leave.  As I passed his van, I could hear him say "New York" to one of his buddies.  I imagine that an old woman traveling through from NY could become an event here.  Oh, he did ask if I had seen the paper mill in International Falls so he must have mentioned Marvin as well.  I now remember that the barmaid told me that they are backed up severely with their orders - I think more than a year - because of covid, but they were probably somewhat backed up before. So it does appear that lumber and forest products is a big employer around here.

Anyway, as I left town, I saw a line of yellow buildings which turned out to be the Marvin plant - or at least the home center of Marvin operations.  At the western end was a separate, more modern building with a sign that identified it as the Marvin training and visitor center.  I waffled but decided it might be worth checking out but once I came back I found that it was closed.   This seemed a theme for the day.  It hadn't started raining then, but shortly thereafter I had to put on the windshield wipers and the rain was fairly constant with changes in intensity for most of the day until late in the afternoon when I was already in ND.  So the theme was I would see something and not be able to decide whether I wanted to stop and take a photo or not.  This was all complicated by the rain and the dullness it created in the landscape.  So I skipped most of the potentials.  The other complicating factor was the lack of a decent shoulder and the narrowneess of the side roads.  There is one image I would have loved - a big stack of rectangular bales against the gold wheat field.  But I didn't get it.  There was a vehicle behind me - not that much traffic today but usually inopportune.

It was about an hour to the ND border.  I was traveling on rt 11 in Minnesota - pretty far north just under the border and then, once I got to ND, I drove mostly on rt 5.  I had looked at the map of ND and chose Pembina as the city where I would switch routes, but I mistook the county name for the city name and ended up 2 stops north on an interstate in Pembina city or town or whatever it is.   This could have been unfortunate, except that as I was turning around, I saw this tower and the words Museum on it, so I went to check it out since it was raining.  It was a little gem of a museum with history of the town from the voyageur fur trading days, through the early explorers and settlers to current farming.  I do like to find out about the farming.  It turns out that ND produces over 50% of our durum wheat.  A museum staffperson told me that most of what I saw in the big silos was wheat.  Corn has come much more recently due to shorter-season varieties.  I have seen hardly any cattle since I started this trip but I did see 4-5 groups of grazing cattle - Black Angus I think.  ND is big into cattle but maybe more in other regions of the state.  Oh, and this is part of the Red River valley.  I don't know where the river is - I haven't seen any traces of it, I don't think.  They also had a room devoted to photographs and descriptions of folk culture tales - things about ghosts and photos of different crafts seen in the state.   It was time well spent.

I continued on with maybe an hour or two to go for the International Peace Garden.  I figured by the time I arrived, it would be too late and maybe still raining.  There was a sign for a campsite maybe 50 miles away but I was heavily leaning toward another hotel night and they were kind of scarce on this route.  There would be big farms with lots of silos and maybe cooperatives in junctions with more silos and mini-grain -elevators.  The towns were about 20 miles apart and had their gas stations, banks and other services but not all had hotels.  The Little Turtle Reservation had a bunch of different casinos, but when I googled for a hotel, none could be found and I couldn't find signs for any either.  The best I could come up with was here in Bottineau, 20 miles west of the Intn'l Peace Garden.  Booking.com found 2 hotels and I chose the Cobblestone Hotel because I came across it first.

I settled in shortly after 6 pm, brought in my coolers - one to make sure the food stayed cold and the second for food to eat for dinner, but I still have 2 spring rolls left for tomorrow.  It is good to have some veggies in my diet.  But I still have 2 green tiger tomatoes left from my garden to eat....before they rot.  I have pretty much finished today's blogging.  I looked at my options for ND touring.  I want to go to Theodore Roosevelt NP and maybe some of the ND State parks.  This will send me to the SW corner of the state and I think there was a native american visitor center somewhere in the center so I will try to piece something together.  Not sure where that will put me once I get to Montana.  I am probably a few days from there still.