Devils Lake

It's been a dull, gray and a bit boring Sunday. We took our time this morning in Grand Forks, even stopped by at Cabela's, a great outdoors store and at the Grand Forks Airforce Base (pics) before we headed west.

The further we came, the deeper the clouds hung, the more snow was on the ground and the colder it got (about 35 deg F/2 deg. C). As we have heard before, also this region was sort of surprised by an early snowfall last week and the promised fall foliage was cancelled. We made a pit stop en route at a futuristic looking rest area (our car in front):

Arrived to Devils Lake, only about 70 mi./100 km south of the Canadian border, after an easy, straight 100 mile drive on Hwy. 2 - not much traffic around in this neck of the woods!

We explored the lake region and the Spirit Lake Casino was our first stop. The "Spirit Lake Nation" - part of the Dakota Nation - calls the lake area its home, but except for the casino-resort and some tribal buildings there is not much to see.

Sullys Hill National Game Preserve is a huge national wildlife refuge on the south shores of Devils Lake, established in 1904. It supports a unique community of habitats such as woodland, mixed-grass prairie and wetlands. The main attraction of the park besides elk and prairie dogs is the bison herd, which once played an important role in the conservation of plains bison. Today there is a population of less than 20 animals - but, unfortunately, we didn't see a single one. Didn't see much at all on our drive, since even the road up to the hill top (with great views) was closed (probably because of road condition), and so was the visitors center. Same for Fort Totten, closed for the season. This military post was set up in 1867 and used continuously until 1890 when it became a boarding school for Indian children. Years ago we stayed there (they rent out rooms, too) and it was cool, would have loved to revisit.

We circled the lake, but infrastracture is rather undeveloped and this remote area first of all seems to be an outdoors destination for North Dakotans and Canadians, mainly for fishing/ice-fishing, camping and some hunting. Sparsely populated, roads under construction and the small city of Devils Lake is not highly attractive neither, at least not in this season.