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The Victoria GAZETTE |
by Sue Orsen We left Victoria around noon on Sunday, July 17th. It was overcast for a while but almost immediately became a beautiful blue-sky day with enough puffy cumulus clouds to make the dome interesting. As we headed west across Minnesota toward Fargo-Moorhead, Interstate 94 was wide and sparsely vehicled. Expansive corn fields gave evidence of abundant rains and were green, lush, and tasseled as far as the eye could see. Amber waves of grain provided a contrasting hue on the vast canvas that surrounded us, along with some of the land’s 10,000 lakes shimmering in the sunshine. Fargo-Moorhead was exactly three hours and fifteen minutes from Victoria, which meant we had nearly seven more hours ahead of us to Tioga. We crossed the state border into the Red River Valley which was broad and flat and obviously fertile. As we progressed in our westerly direction, green remained the dominant color on the other side of our windshield, although the patches of already-turned wheat fields grew in number and size. We drove through Valley City, then Jamestown, both on Interstate 94, and then veered north on #52. Instead of large lakes on the landscape, there were now smaller bodies of water, which Allan called ptholes, positioned here and there across the plains. He said they were shallow and attracted ducks, and he reminded me that he and son Nick hunted ducks in that area a few years ago. As a matter of fact, he pointed to the hotel where they spent a night in Carrington and to the restaurant where they had a meal or two.
Devils Lake The shores of Devils Lake, our halfway destination for the evening, were soon upon us. We drove up to the Spirit Lake Casino and Hotel overlooking Devils Lake at 6:45 p.m. The place was exactly three hours from Fargo-Moorhead. Timely person that I am, I like to know how long it takes to get from here to there. We had seen Devils Lake a few times from the sleeper cars of a fast-moving Amtrak train, but now we were seeing it up close and personal. It is an amazing lake, one that reminded me of Lake Minnetonka with its many fingers and legs and belly bays, but the similarities stopped there. Devils Lake is 60 feet at its deepest while Lake Minnetonka has a maximum depth of 133 feet. Devils Lake is 140,000 acres in size while Lake Minnetonka is 14,500 acres in size. In other words, our Minnetonka is twice as deep, but Devils Lake stretches out ten times bigger. Allan said that Devils Lake has been rising and flooding since the 1990’s. In fact, this rising, sprawling body of water has destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses and deluged thousands of acres of productive farmland. In the last few years, the State of North Dakota and the U.S. Government have spent millions of dollars to raise roads, railroad lines, and power lines. As we explored the area, we drove on roads that were no more than a few inches above the lake level. Some of the shorelines had been piled with rocks to keep the water from going over the roads. We could see many trees that had drowned and died in the rising waters. They stood like dead soldiers, waist high with naked and shiny white branches, their bark having washed away from soaking too long without reprieve. It was an amazing lake to drive around -- and drive through -- and also mysterious like its name, roughly translated from an Indian word about bad spirits. Those bad spirits also hang out at the nearby slot machines along with a haze of blue cigarette smoke that you could cut with a knife. Thankfully, the lack of fresh air kept our stay and our losses to a minimum. |
August 2010 |
Amazing Lakes |