Tonight we ended up in the aptly named town of Devil's Lake, North Dakota. Yup, we polished off Wisconsin and Minnesota today in our rush to Glacier National Park. We finally stopped for the night at the Walmart in Devil's Lake. It was not our original destination. At the start of the day, we figured that we would just reach North Dakota and stop at Turtle River State Park, about 20 miles beyond the border, but we got to that point so early that we decided to push on and stop at Shelvers Grove Recreation Area on Devil's Lake, about three miles before the town.
After two attempts to find it, we realized that it was no longer there. The lake level was so high that it was entirely under water. It was not on Devil's Lake, but in Devil's Lake. This area is not far from Minot, ND, an area that had extensive flooding this spring. Fortunately, the Walmart was just up the road because the next park was 40 miles further on and we were pretty beat after traveling 467 miles.
It was an interesting drive particularly when we ran into a violent thunderstorm near McIntosh, MN. We saw the storm coming and saw some low hanging cloud under it. As the rain came, we pulled into a rest area because the visibility was so bad, turned on the radio and heard them talking about tornado warnings for the towns just to the east of us. Nothing that windy came through the rest area just torrential rain. It was over in about 20 minutes and that was it until just now. It is lightly raining in Devil's Lake as I write this.
This drive to Glacier could also be called a coffee tour of the upper midwest as we found two more good coffee houses. The first was in Ashland, WI, called the Tap Root Cafe, overlooking Lake Superior. We had coffee (a good latte for me, black coffee for Ellen), hand-cut apple donuts and fruit turnovers for breakfast. The barista had been out to Glacier and Yellowstone with her family last year and up to Acadia this year. Got a few hints. We also traded stories with a Canadian couple from the Toronto area who were circumnavigating the Great Lakes two-up on a Harley pulling a trailer.
The second coffee stop was actually a lunch stop at Brewed Awakenings in Grand Rapids, MN. They make an okay, but pricey, tuna melt and a good Cappuccino slush (the original Frappuccino). After lunch we also stopped in the next town, since it was the other Cohasset--Cohasset, Minnesota.
From there it was virtually non-stop (except for the rain time-out) all the way to Devil's Lake. It is still 740 miles to Glacier, so we'll see how far we get tomorrow--not all the way, I'm sure.
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