During our 20 years traveling this continent, we’ve spent the night in 48 states and eight Canadian providences/territories.  It’s been amazing. Really AMAZING! But one state we never even stepped our toe into was North Dakota. As we headed west on Our Sofa Surfing Summer trip it seemed like the perfect opportunity to rectify that oversight!

I knew we weren’t going to get to see the whole state (and I’m fully aware that there is some fabulous stuff over on the west side), but we were able to experience some of the eastern North Dakota treasures!
Like Fargo –

We did a walk-about of the downtown

and loved the quirky quaintness of it!


The next day we ventured a further west,

with our sights on Bismarck, the state capitol.

It’s a little late in our travels to start trying to get to each state capital, but I’m glad we stopped at this one! Instead of the more familiar (to us anyway!) dome style, this was built in 1931 in an Art Deco tower style. There was lots of symbolism in the interior of the building

and a pretty great view from the top floor, too!

I’ll be honest here – at this point of our Sofa Surfing Summer travels, we were both running out of tourist gas. So although we knew there was LOTS more to see in North Dakota, we settled for a capitol tour, a great lunch and a quick drive through town before we turned our truck south. Some final impressions of North Dakota?
The Great Plains are expansive!

There are oceans of sunflowers (ND is a leading producer of sunflowers!).

And when you least expect it, the field is populated with bison instead of cattle!

North Dakota – we didn’t do you justice, but at least we can say we’ve been there!
Just one state to go, and quite honestly, I’m not sure Hawaii is on the docket anytime soon.
But now to find that North Dakota sticker…

Thanks for coming along!

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