I think we all should send a postcard in 2011. I used to more regularly. Here's one from my 2001 research trip of the US Great Plains for Lonely Planet -- sent to the LP staff in Oakland. Snippets on why the country's least-visited state deserved a longer look:
The proud CVB in Fargo is shaped like a grain elevator, gives free cookies and neglects to put a single attraction on its Fargo tourist map.
The capitol in Bismarck looks like a Stalinist school of dentistry.
Kev, the chef at Cowboy Cafe in Medora, - a completely round man - will sit down and talk with you for hours. Says 'dang' a lot.
There were more visitors at the world's largest holstein cow, at New Salem, than the state's great national park.
Fargo's SkyWalk looks like an outtake from a Scorpions video.
My tux has a big stitched-on heart fed with 41 aortas that pump only in the company of North Dakota. Here's why:
1. It's the least visited state. 2. If you leave your shorts at Sully Inn in Medora, they'll call the Cowboy Cafe to see if you there to get them back to you.
3. Grand Forks is the birthplace of creamed wheat. 4. Causes of death at cemetery at Ft Buford: 'drowned,' 'murdered,' 'murdered,' 'suicide.' 5. When you ask how business is at a bagel cafe in Williston, they'll answer 'very North Dakota-y.'
6. Locals call themselves Nodaks. That's just cute.
7. The North Dakota capitol in Bismarck looks like a Stalinist school of dentistry, and has been criticized as looking 'fascist.'
8. There's a 38-foot-tall cow in New Salem. 9. The Fargo visitor's center is made to look like a grain elevator 10. Fargo's Motel 6 attendant says 'fun' four times in a three-minute conversation, eg 'it's fun going to the visitor's center for free bags and pencils and stuff.' 11. At Fargo's kid-oriented Space Aliens Grill there's a fully stocked and visible bar.
12. Its shape. 13. North Dakota regularly threatens to drop the 'North' of its name and become Dakota, thus infuriating South Dakota. 14. Peter, who pours cafe at a hiply retro Fargo cafe, insists you take a copy of the Fargo phonebook. 15. Apparently not one local has ever pronounced UND (University of North Dakota) as 'und.' 16. Promoter for Grand Forks' Westward Ho bar/comedy club on North Dakotans: 'People here are basically hicks, they just look hip because they know how to call 1-800-SCREW.' 17. The film Fargo was set in Minnesota, and some locals don't like it. One Fargo residents says, 'Those who get upset are the ones with the same accents.' 18. Lewis & Clark spent more time here than any other 'state.' 19. Listening to Standing Rock Indian Reservation radio, the DJ cuts off every song 75% the way through, and friends drop by to request 'Stairway to Heaven' for their moms; 'she loves that song.'
20. If you call the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and ask if the sun on the North Dakota is rising or falling, they will make every attempt to figure it out. 21. The left-handed waitress at the 4 Bears Casino & Lodge in New Town, in a reservation of the three affiliated tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa, Anikara) who said 'all the best people in the world are left-handed.' 22. Asking for a cafe in Rugby, locals will point out one and say 'it has coffee, espresso, capuccino...' then look back to see if you're impresssed. 'The real stuff.'
23. After WWI, North Dakota teamed up with Manitoba to end all wars by forming the trans-national International Peace Garden, which spans the border. Shortly after its creation WWII began.
24. The guy running the visitor's center in Rugby -- the geographical center of North America -- stocks travel brochures from states and provinces of the US and Canada, sells Mexico flags, and can tell which states have the biggest/smallest tourism budgets. 'New Jersey sent cartons of brochures and 1000 New Jersey maps, Virginia sent just one.' 25. The waitress in Medora, with permed bleached hair and reddish cheeks, who noticed me talking with a local and brought me a full pot of coffee. 'Go ahead and have some more coffee if you're going to sit and talk a bit, or am I going to have to twist your arm?' 26. Ask at Dickinson's Dinosaur Museum to speak with the fossil-collector and he'll show you the bones he personally found. 27. People snow-kite. 28. Dakota Territory was split in half as two states in 1889 because Republicans wanted an extra senator in Congress. 29. Sacajawea is the most famous North Dakotan on a US dollar coin. Roger Maris almost made the North Dakota quarter. 30. Theo Roosevelt credits North Dakota for his rise to the presidency. 31. The Red River, the naughtily flooding Red River, flows northward. 32. Kevin, an almost perfectly round diner cook in Medora, says of prairie dogs 'people from the east expect dogs, but they're just little rats.' 33. Minot rhymes with 'why not?' 34. The Grand Forks Herald took recent (and faulty) criticism from USA Today last year that ND was the most corrupt state in the US very personally. Link, if you're willing to pay $2.95.
35. There's a 28-foot tall buffalo in Jamestown. 36. I once made a bad song about North Dakota called 'North Dakota.' 37. Fargo is the biggest city of the coldest state and its tourism slogan is 'always warm.' 38. The buffalo have black tongues.
39. Theodore Roosevelt National Park may be one of the most overlooked in the US. 40. If you show up at the International Peace Garden out of season, and desperately want a t-shirt, someone will unlock the store and let you pick out one.
North Dakota's state quarter came out three years ago, but I only saw my first today, after getting my change for a mid-morning bagel in Brooklyn. Intrigued by the buffalo -- one eating, one seeming a little jolly -- I made an online search to see what quarter designs this one beat. And I found a curious pattern that NO OTHER STATE had shown: spearing prong-like 'rays' of a setting sun that resembles the Japanese Imperial Navy flag during WWII.
The link couldn't be intentional, right? North Dakota, for some sick reason, is tributing the imperial Japanese navy -- and army -- who took millions of lives during WWII? Why?
The original USS North Dakota never made it to Japan and stayed way out of harm's way during WWI -- mostly making care-package trips around the Caribbean. It was disassembled before WWII. A new submarine called the USS North Dakota is currently in construction. However, the USS South Dakota -- named for the north's mocking rival to the south -- was badly damaged by Japan's Imperial Navy in 1942. That seems bad taste.
A Phone Call One difference between the designs was clear to see. The Japanese flag -- known as the Rising Sun Flag -- has 16 rays. North Dakota's versions have seven, eight and nine. But a bigger question is whether or not North Dakota's suns depict sunrises or sunsets? The farm shot shows no chimney smoke or stirring creatures, while goose fly at sunrise and sunset. No clues. Perhaps the clue is the buffalo -- alert and feasting as the sun dips or rises behind them.
So I phoned the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the southwestern corner of the state, a lovely area with two units of badlands and plenty of wildlife. The operator there immediately suggested 'Mike' could help and sent my call to him.
Mike seemed eager to help. 'There are no dumb questions.' I asked him if he knew when bison wake up. 'Bison are a daytime animal, unlike deer for example. Most of their activities go on during the day,' he said seriously. 'But that said, I'll drive by a group of 200 during the day -- maybe 100 are eating, another 100 laying around, some with eyes shut. They eat and sleep throughout the day.' So they eat all day then? Dawn to dusk? 'Yup' -- he really said 'yup' -- 'Remember that grass is a low quality food, and they have a big stomach to keep full.'
I mentioned the quarter, and here Mike got particularly interested. 'Let's see, if we had any defining features of the formation behind them, we could figure this out...' He paused. 'We'd probably need to talk with the artist though... Do you know the artist?' I said I didn't. 'You know, if I had to guess -- purely guess -- I'd say it's evening. Very few people out here get up that early.'
We'll go with Mike. It's not 'rising sun' but a falling one. And to be honest, when I visited the Roosevelt Park's North Unit in 2001, the two-lane load reaches it from the east. That's where most of the bison are. I had about 60 or 70 immediately surrounding my rental car. An artist heading up there would get the same vantage point of the badlands -- looking west.
--> Perhaps it would have been less confusing if North Dakota went with the Roger Maris quarter, tributing the homerun hero from Fargo.
