Hey everybody, we've been here in Medora now for just more than two months. It's been pretty good for the both of us, with the biggest complaint being that Katie and I don't get to spend very much time together. In other working gigs that we've done, we've never had this much separation during the work day. Which isn't bad in the long run, it's just an inconvenience as I don't get to spend as much time as I would like to spend with Katie. Ya see, in my job as a lawn care worker (...sometimes called a grounds keeper at a golf course, ok?) there has to be folks that work in the afternoon and early evening because that is usually when there are fewer folks on the golf course and more mowing can be done as opposed to the early parts of the day when there is more dew on the grass and more golfers wanting to be there when the temps are cooler. So my work schedule has one - two days a week when I'm gone in the afternoon and early evening. Katie's work schedule has usually been a daily split shift with her going to work for a couple hours, coming home, and then back to work, sometimes until 9 PM at night. Lately, we haven't been able to spend as much time together as I'd like because of those work schedules. Having said that, it's only gonna be for less than another three months, so it's a doable thing. Good for that.
On our few days off together, as well as the Sundays that I work from 5:30 - 9:30 AM or less, we try to see a little bit more of North Dakota than what we've seen so far. If it's a Sunday, we've been going to Dickinson for a ...healthful, ...nutritious, ...wholesome breakfast at the golden arches, McDonalds. Yeah, it's probably not the best cuisine for us, but we're currently liking their steak McMuffin. That, and their coffee, is what we'll have on Sunday mornings. Then we go to church at Evangelical Bible Church of Dickinson. After church, we'll hit a market for our weekly shopping, either Wal-Mart, Family Fare Supermarket, or the new Cash Wise market. We'd been shopping at Wal-Mart as they have just about everything we'd possibly ever want, but thought we'd try the Family Fare store, and found it to be more expensive than Wal-Mart. But this last Sunday, we tried Cash Wise, which is like a small Winco Foods with the same variety, food display, and ...feeling that Winco provides, although they aren't owned by the same company from what I learned from an employee. Not that anyone really cares, but we'll probably be shopping at Cash Wise more in the future while we're in Medora.
After shopping, we try to find a place that we haven't been to see. On last Saturday, we went to see the Enchanted Highway, which is a stretch of road from I-94 on the north to Regent on the south. What makes it enchanted is the seven humongous scrap metal sculptures off the side of the road. The sculptor, Gary Greff, sculpted them in an effort to stop his home town of Regent becoming a ghost town. That's where we started our journey stopping at the Enchanted Castle Hotel first, which was a former school that's been remodeled in a castle like way.
As you can see from the outside of it, it was a school
And the former school house before that is just a few feet away as well.
While this was a weekend, there just weren't that many folks at the Castle, not even someone at the front desk (I'm guessing that they were just out and about the property). We only saw a custodian who wasn't able to answer our questions about the history of the castle as he had just moved there. But from the websites I've visited, the Enchanted Castle gets high marks for hospitality and food as well.
From there we went to the Enchanted Highway Gift Shop, which had not only memorabilia about the highway, but ice cream as well. No, we didn't imbibe in it as we had plans for lunch later on.
Across the street were various other touristy shops that weren't open on Saturday. Strangely enough, the convenience store on the far right in the photo below wasn't open either, although the gas pumps looked like someone could get gas from them. Not that it's bad, just that we've never seen a convenience store that wasn't open on the weekend.
We didn't realize it, but there is a sculpture right next to the Enchanted Highway Gift Shop that I didn't show much of in the previous photo of it. I guess it's a mechanized sculpture as the figures moved about while we were looking at it. Just can't show it in a photo, ya know?
We wandered around the town a little more to see what it was like and found the office of the Cannonball Company. At first, I thought that they must make shotgun ammunition, and this was only their offices rather than their manufacturing plant. I was quite wrong as the Cannonball Company hosts hunting expeditions for pheasant, white tail deer, grouse and partridge, and prairie dog. I can see hunting the pheasant, white tail deer, grouse and partridge, but I'm baffled about hunting prairie dog. I don't think that I'd be doing any hunting of them, or eating of them, but apparently it's a big sport in some places.
From there, we headed north for a couple of miles to find the Tin Family. I was pleasantly surprised to find that all of the sculptures have good parking, and most have a sheltered picnic table as well. The figures here are anchored to the ground with telephone poles, the man stands 45' high, the woman 44' high, and the boy is only 23' high.
Going a few more miles up the road is the sculpture of Teddy Roosevelt Rides Again, which is made of 1 3/4" well pipe, stands 51' high and weighs about 9,000 pounds. In the photo, it shows a bulletin board in the lower right corner telling about the other sculptures, as well as the Enchanted Highway RV Park which offers a full hook up for only $20/night, which isn't bad if ya need that.
We'd seen a lot of yellow fields that day and thought that it was mustard growing. But when we checked in the gift shop in Regent, we were told that it was canola, and you can read about it here if ya don't know much about it.
The next sculpture was Pheasants on the Prairie with the rooster being 40' tall and 70' long. Humongous birds.
Fisherman's Dream is the title of the next sculpture, and it shows a lot of work with a few fish, a boat with a fisherman in it, as well as underwater vegetation also.
Grasshopper's In The Field was the next sculpture up the road, with a humongous grasshopper and two smaller ones that are still large enough to gobble me up, and still go for more folks my size. Off to the right are littler ones even yet that are mounted on springs that little folks can sit on and go back and forth.
The town of Lefor was up the road a bit. It had a population of over 200 at one time, mostly of Hungarian descent, but has turned into a ghost town kinda over the years. It was founded in 1890 and named for the first postmaster, Adam Lefor. Here is the sign on the road.
And here is the claim to fame for Lefor, St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church. Quite a large one as you might be able to tell in the second picture (which was taken looking into the rear view mirror).
Next up the road is Deer Crossing. As is with all the other sculptures, this one is really big as well, as you may be able to tell by looking at Katie in the lower left corner. The buck is 75' tall and the doe is 50' tall, and they're both held up with many really large guy-wires.
Just a little distance up the road was another town, Gladstone, which was incorporated in 1882 and named for the British Prime Minister William Gladstone, a liberal British politician in the 19th century. The 2010 population of Gladstone was 239, so I'm thinking that it's now about the size of what Lefor used to be. Not a bad place, it was just like the other bergs that we went through on that day in that there wasn't a lot of anything going on.
The last sculpture can be seen from I-94 as well as the Enchanted Highway. "Geese In Flight" is, in my opinion, the most famous sculpture as more people see it than any of the other sculptures. It holds the record in the Guiness Book of Records as the Largest Scrap Metal Sculpture being 110' tall and 154' long. The wingspan of the largest goose is 30' and the whole sculpture weighs in at almost 79 tons. To me, it is the most impressive of all the sculptures.
From there, we headed back home which was about 47 miles to the west on I-94. Not a bad day to see some of the stuff in North Dakota, huh?
Hope you had a great day, and enjoyed reading about the Enchanted Highway. Be blessed!
