On the Road Again - Fargo

It was another driving day - this time 10.5 hours to cross North Dakota and Minnesota. From the interstate, North Dakota looked a lot like Montana - farmland out to the horizon. It was a little bit hillier, and a little bit greener. And there were a LOT of hay bales. Each of those round bales weighed 1,500 lbs!

As big fans of Joel and Ethan Coen, we were excited to stop in Fargo. True, it was the middle of summer, so we knew there would be no resemblance to scenes from the movie. (Notice the fence in the photo above? Now imagine the field covered with snow, and Steve Buscemi burying a briefcase full of cash. Can't see it? We couldn't, either...)

The Fargo-Moorhead Visitors Center looked like a grain elevator. There was a Walk of Fame outside and beautiful high ceilings and friendly people inside.

The best part, of course, was the homage to the movie Fargo. There were framed movie posters, a glass case with the iconic red ice scraper, snow globes, and other movie memorabilia, and the pièce de résistance: the original woodchipper from the movie, autographed by Joel and Ethan!

After Fargo we drove into Minnesota and through the town of Brainerd (movie police chief Marge Gunderson's home town and where much of the action in the film takes place). We stopped in Duluth for a tasty BBQ dinner in the hip brewery district and had our first look at Lake Superior. We drove on into Wisconsin, to get some sleep before our next adventure.