Sakakawea Trail - Das Butte

There aren't a lot of buildings on this drive, and a lot of the ones you do see are for agricultural rather than residential purposes.

The towns are small and picturesque, often heralded only by the traffic warning sign "reduced speed zone ahead." One such small town made a big impression. The signs announce "Dodge City." This is not Dodge City, Kansas, of Gunsmoke fame. This is Dodge City, North Dakota, a town so small that its city hall has a hand stencilled sign.

Their Wikipedia entry is typical of this little town with a big heart: "Dodge is a city in Dunn County, North Dakota in the United States. The population was 125 at the 2000 census." Any place that has a population of 125 and calls itself a city is okay with me. Driving through Dodge City I also found a sign announcing the location of the Future Veterans' Memorial. Now that's thinking ahead. Dodge is clearly a city on the move.

As I headed west towards the end of the Sakakawea Trail, the buttes started to reappear here and there. First there was the occasional isolated, barren rock mass in the middle of a hay field, then gradually they dominated the landscape again, making it as useless for agriculture as any bit of Australia. Part of this area is designated as a National Grassland. Some of it is available for hiking and camping, some of it allows the preservation of native flora and fauna and I suspect some of it was just plain no good for anything else. But it looks good.

I ended my scenic drive in the town of Killdeer which bills itself as the hub of Cowboy Country. I had passed the turnoff for this town on the way east on the Interstate the previous evening, when my brain somehow recorded its name as Deerkill (Alas, poor Bambi, I knew him briefly). Now that I was driving in the other direction I discovered that the name was also reversed.

Fortunately neither deer nor killdeer were harmed during my passage through North Dakota, although I do have to report that Puff Lite and I did ruthlessly murder several hundred bugs. The brightly coloured wing powder of many varieties of butterflies was splattered across Puff Lite's white face. It looked like a tiny paintball team had been duelling on the hood.