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It doesn’t resemble Lake Minnetonka or Lake Auburn or Pierson Lake. Sakakawea is not lined with trees or tall grasses or sandy beaches. The stone and rock formations on its shoreline kept reminding me of Sedona, that outstanding red-rock place in Arizona. The crags and cliffs were breathtaking, and striations spoke to us of past millenniums.

In my wildest dreams, I never imagined a lake like this in the State of North Dakota. As a matter of fact, lakes didn’t factor into the equation at all when this next door neighbor came to mind.

We saw the water colors change with the changing sky. When the sky was blue, Sakakawea was just as blue and we pulled the kids on an inflated rocket at speeds that should have scared the wits out of them but instead it only scared Grandma Sue.

When the sky was pouring down rain like from a garden hose on high, the lake was also wet and gray. But Captain Christopher sped down the lake at 35 mph until we again found the sun.

Eventually we came to a shoreline diner that had a place to dock a couple boats so we disembarked and went in for lunch. Jenny calls it Little Lord Fletchers or Mini-Maynard’s. I call it just plain fun. In fact it is called Tobacco Gardens.

So how did Lake Sakakawea come to be? First of all, it was the glaciers that once covered North Dakota that carved out the rough terrain. Second of all, it was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that created the Garrison Dam on the Missouri River. The Dam was built for flood control, hydroelectric power, navigation, and irrigation. When the Dam was completed in 1956, Lake Sakakawea was formed.

It is the third largest man-made lake in the United States and is named after an Indian woman. It covers a surface area of 368,000 acres and has depths of 180 feet. It is 178 miles long and 14 miles wide at its widest point. There are 1,600 miles of shoreline. At times we couldn’t see the shoreline. It’s an amazing lake.

Did Gunnar and his dad catch any fish? No, but one of them wasn’t trying very hard, as you can see. This past winter, however, they put their fish house out on Sakakawea and caught some walleye. If you recall, Allan and I were supposed to have spent an overnight with them in the fish house in early March but we arrived a couple days after they were forced to pull it off the lake due to warm temperatures and pools of water. Maybe this winter.

We said our goodbyes and left Tioga at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 21st, and arrived at the Wagon Wheel Hotel in Valley City five hours later, at 8:30 p.m. The next morning we were on the road already at 7:20 a.m. One hour later we were driving through Fargo. Around noon we were home in Victoria, ten hours from Tioga.

Thank you, Jenny and Christopher, Addie and Gunnar, for your hospitality. You live in an amazing part of the country.

View the entire array

of “Amazing Lakes” photos

in Sue’s Album,

located at www.VictoriaGazette.com.

Go to:

Ten Hours to Tioga

and

Lake Sakakawea