Where We Be
Jamestown, North Dakota
Beautiful autumn harvest view along the Sheyenne River Scenic Byway near Jamestown
Typical North Dakota stretch of road. Lawrence Welk was born near here in Strasburg.
Robin is dwarfed by the world's largest buffalo in Jamestown
We particularly liked this one-room schoolhouse at Frontier Village, which was moved here from another part of the state
Historic farmhouse along the Sheyenne River. The posted sign indicated eight children were raised in this tiny cabin!
We don't know what crop this is but it sure is beautiful!
Pretty farmstead along the Sheyenne River Scenic Byway
This is the Sheyenne River and an American Scenic Byway follows its meandering course
"You did what?!"
We made a pit stop at Little Yellowstone Park, a green
oasis of trees and grass and bubbling brooks about
halfway through our drive along the Sheyenne River
Scenic Byway. Suddenly Robin came running out of
the outhouse and cried, “Bob, I just dropped my keys
down the hole!”

"What hole?" I asked stupidly, then realized, "Oh, no,
not
that hole!" The keys had tumbled out of her
pocket as she was sitting down and had fallen
straight in.

Robin got a flashlight and shone it down the hole, and
there it was, visible but mired in a bed of you-know-
what.

I started assembling a "fishing rod" of sticks tied
together with a cord, but Robin found a better way.
She asked the only other person in the park (probably
the only other person in a ten-mile radius of that
remote area) if he happened to have a coat hanger in
his car. Unbelievably, he did. She straightened it out
and bent a hook at one end. With her shining a light
and me working the “fishing rod,” we managed to
hook the keys on our first try.

Robin spent the next thirty minutes cleaning and
recleaning them. As you can see from the picture,
even after she was finished, she still felt squeamish
about holding them, and who can blame her?
Robin holds the keys that took a little journey to a place none of us wants to go
We found the countryside of North Dakota curiously
soothing. All that wide-open space, with blue skies
stretching from horizon to horizon and only a handful
of people per square mile, felt like stepping back in
time to a simpler era.

The highlight of our drive through North Dakota was
the Sheyenne River Scenic Byway. This old winding
stretch of road near Jamestown runs from Valley City
to Lisbon, North Dakota. It is 47 miles in length, and
about half of it is paved. It follows the course of the
Sheyenne River and is probably just about the only
road in North Dakota that doesn’t go straight. If you
look on a roadmap, virtually every road forms a right
angle with every other road, but not this one. It goes
where the river goes, and all those curves and
sudden unexpected views make it picturesque.

Small farmsteads dot the landscape. Crops ready for
harvest fill the fields. Hay bales are scattered here
and there or stacked into improbable piles. Cows
munch on lush grass. Frogs hop ambitiously across
the road in a real-life version of “Frogger.” Orange-
gold crops add rich color to the landscape.
We were surprised at the soothing beauty of North Dakota countryside
Even the rocking chairs are oversized here
Still getting away with T-shirt and shorts
I threw Robin in the clink for losing her keys
Orange-gold crops and a curving stretch of road call out for a photo stop
We happened upon Frontier Village in Jamestown