Lake Sakakawea

I’d say that the biggest event for us this time in Tioga was Lake Sakakawea.  Located about 15 miles from their front door, it is an amazing lake.  We’ve never before been on a lake quite like Sakakawea, certainly not in Minnesota.

The lake doesn’t resemble Lake Minnetonka or Lake Auburn or Lake 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 comes to mind.

We saw the water colors change with the changing sky.

When the sky was blue, Sakakawea was just as blue.

When the sky was pouring down rain like from a garden hose on high, the lake was also wet and gray.

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 is an amazing lake.

Did Gunnar and his dad catch any fish?  No, but one of them wasn’t very hard (remember Christopher, above, with the fishing pole). 

Eventually we came to a shoreline diner that had a place to dock a couple of boats …

… so we disembarked and went in for lunch.

Jenny calls it Little Lord Fletchers or Mini-Maynard’s.

I called it just plain fun.

In fact it was called Tobacco Gardens.

Probably the highlight for Addie and Gunnar was in-the-water time.

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 and also Mama Jenny.

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.  We were home in Victoria around noon, ten hours from Tioga.

The End