Sheyenne National Grassland

While I was studying the map a few days ago, I noticed we were just a short drive down the road from Sheyenne National Grassland. With nothing much else on the agenda for yesterday, we decided to go have a look. Before that, however, we got Smitty out for another walk.

With so few people here (and no woofies), he felt bold enough to walk across the road where he could take a good dust bath and sample the most delectable grasses North Dakota has to offer.

Sadie kept an eye on things from her catio.

Our navigation unit didn't seem to know where the "grasslands" were, and so we put in the name of a town within the boundary. I'd read something about it and recognized the town, McLeod, as having a museum that might be of interest. Good enough. Off we went. I'm going to estimate we drove about 40 miles to reach the boundary.

From there, it was only a little ways farther to reach the McLeod Museum.

There was a small campground behind the museum. There we saw this tractor wheel being used to create a fire pit. I'm going to estimate this wheel was about six feet in diameter.

The buildings were all locked. There was a phone number to call if we wanted to go inside. We weren't interested enough to make the call, but an elderly couple came along in an electric golf cart. They were on their way somewhere, but they had a key they would have been happy to retrieve to let us in. Again, we didn't want to make them turn around, and so we just stayed outside and chatted. In the image below, you can see the McLeod Schoolhouse.

Next door was the Frisk House.

Again, it was locked up, but I did peer in the front window.

I couldn't see much, but that rocking horse was worth a picture.

Our new-found friends shared with us some of the history of the place and told us how some of the antique farm implements worked. We were interested that so many low spots in the area were filled with water. Any low spot on the landscape seems to be a pond or a slough. They told us the water table here is very high, and that one only need dig down about 4 feet to find water.

If you didn't get enough of antique farm implements in my post about Sunne Farm, then here are a few more pictures for you.

This next sign relates to the image below it.

We didn't see as much grass as we thought we would, but what we saw was tall. This is the only national grassland on the tallgrass prairie.

Our friends told us that some of the land has been privately owned for generations, and so farming is still permitted.

Where the land isn't planted in some crop, it is all grass.

It would be a very good place to be a cow.

We've seen fields just like this one for most of our journey. In North Dakota, hay bales line the roadways, even on the interstate. We were told this is allowed up until a certain date, when all the hay bales must be collected from the roadways because of the snow.

Here's an example of one of the ponds I'm talking about. We've seen lots of birds of prey in these areas, mainly osprey and hawks.

Also, I captured a few barns along the way.

And some interesting nondescript structures.

We passed through the town of Lisbon both going and coming. We picked up a few groceries there when we arrived, and we needed more drinking water. We picked up a few more things before heading back to the RV.

And that was our day. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing. When we arrived home, we found both kitties flaked out on the bed. I wanted to tell you about Smitty and this little quilt he's lying on.

I believe I've mentioned before that he likes to snuggle next to me at night. The problem is that he kneads his claws into my skin. On cooler nights, I put a sweatshirt on to protect my skin. When it's too warm for that, I've taken to using small quilts I've made and received in exchanges with others over the years. The one in this picture was made by my friend Janet M. during the doll quilt swap from several years back. I've been using it as my protective shield in the RV. Recently, I got the idea to put it on the bed during the day, thinking Smitty might like to nap there. As you can see, it has been gratefully received.

Also, I convinced Mike to take the footage from his drone that was filmed during our visit to Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. It's a short fly-over video of the field around the blockhouses and the Missouri River. If you can't see the video, then click right here.

Finally...remember this image from the Sunne Farm showing an antique quilt on the bed in the log cabin?

Well, my friend Dorothy very cleverly identified the quilt block as the Japanese Lantern. Then, she even found a pattern in an old Workbasket magazine. Click here to find the pdf and scroll to page 4 to find it. Thank you, Dorothy.

Today we'll be heading to Kabetogama, Minnesota, where we have reservations at an honest-to-goodness RV park. I'm down to the last of my socks and underwear, and so I badly need to catch up on the laundry. We have tickets for a boat tour at Voyageurs National Park. It's the same tour we took the last time we were here. You can read about it at this old blog post. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we're going to do it again.

Internet shouldn't be a problem at our next location, and so I don't expect to disappear any time soon. For now I'll get in some slow-stitching time, and then we'll be on our way. See you on the other side.