8/11/23
After a five hour drive across the remaining portion of North Dakota we got to our campground in Grand Forks. Actually, in East Grand Forks, which by virtue of the fact that it is on the east bank of the Red River, lies in the great state of Minnesota. Another state, another state park, this one Minnesota’s Red River State Park. Grand Forks is a good sized city (population 58,781) and home of the primary land grant university in the state, the University of North Dakota. The downtown area is full of restaurants and watering holes, and its location along the Red River has resulted in lots of green space by the river and the occasional catastrophic flood. There is a stone monument on the greenway near the river that shows the high water mark of the greatest historic floods. The highest of the high occurred in 1997 and by the looks of it a good portion of the two cities must have been submerged.
Ollie and I found a bona fide dog park this afternoon, our first since Spearfish. Not the best of the ones we’ve seen this trip, but entirely passable. The one drawback of being a traveler is that you often find yourself at such places in the middle of the day on weekdays. And who tends to be at dog parks in the middle of the day on weekdays? Retired people. Most are wonderful people, but there is a percentage that are full-goose crazy. I shared a bench with one of the latter today. He seemed nice enough to start, with his little, one-eyed rescue chihuahua that was a real sweetheart. But as we talked, he wandered further and further toward the end of the board. There is one black person in Ashland, WI that is there to satisfy a quota… My daughter-in-law, who was born in Canada, is at risk for deportation at any moment, possibly in the middle of the night. All drug companies are criminal organizations, a fact that anyone can look up. And on, and on. And everything said with a Trump-esque “Nobody knows more about {name your topic} than I do”. After a little while, I claimed to hear the mothership calling and begged our leave.
8/13/23 (Sunday)
This is our third day in the Grand Forks area. Although there have been several periods of rain while we have been here, they have occurred mostly at night and the weather has been very good for such adventuring as we have wanted to do. Friday morning was a time of errands; a trip to the laundromat, an oil change for the truck, and grocery shopping. More exploring of the town in the afternoon – the university, various parks, and a road trip to the nearest town of any size in Minnesota, Crookston. I think I am fairly familiar with at least the names of many small towns, but I have never in my life heard of Crookston. Crookston boasts a population of about 7,500. My impression from driving through and stopping at a local store is that it is what I would picture Mayberry to be like if the residents replaced their southern drawls with the distinctive Minnesoootah accent. “Cute” doesn’t do justice to the town, but it will do for now. There is a branch of the University of Minnesota there, also small and cute.
I took in a late-night screening of Oppenheimer on Friday night (very good, and very intense for its entire three hours and five minutes), and Ollie and I were up and ready to go by mid-morning on Saturday. First stop: dog park. On the way to the park through downtown Grand Forks I saw that there was a good sized farmer’s market in the public plaza next to the river. After an hour of letting Ollie dog-park himself out, we came back, parked on the other side of the river, and went in to see what the market had to offer.
The first booth we saw as we walked in was hosted by “Bee Girl”. Bee Girl, whose given name is Christi, raises and sells honeybees and everything that goes along with them. Hers is apparently a business of some size, and she had lots of honey for sale. We got to talking and I told her that my son is a home brewer and had just been talking about making mead for the first time and that maybe I would get some honey to take to him. By that time it was pretty close to the end of the market, and Christi made an offer to sell a gallon of honey to me for half the price she had been asking so as not to have to take it back with her. I quickly checked with Andrew and he confirmed that the price was really low. Sold.
I was now the owner of a box containing fourteen pounds of honey, an owner whose vehicle was parked ¼ mile away across the river and whose leashed companion had ever-changing notions of where he wanted to go next. Christi volunteered one of her guys to help carry the honey to my truck, help which I gratefully accepted. Thus began a brief but truly enjoyable interlude with Kirby, my honey mule.
Kirby is from Dallas, Texas. His regular job is in some capacity with the conservation department but he raises bees on a small scale as a hobby. I would estimate Kirby to be forty years old, but I suspect his life has not been one of ease and he may indeed be younger than he looks. Kirby has come to North Dakota to help work on the hives for a couple of months. The best harvest season for honey is July thru September, and so we are right in the middle of that. He is here to learn more about the process, especially as it is done by the larger, industrial-sized farms. Kirby knows a lot about bees but wants to know more and would like to grow his three-hive operation into something larger. Or maybe just keep getting more involved in the field in some capacity. He is a lover of nature and is fascinated by the truly fascinating process by which honey is created. He reminded me that during a honeybee’s short life it can produce about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. That means that the honey I purchased was the life’s work of almost 14,000 bees. Quite a humbling statistic.
Kirby strikes me as a good-hearted, wide-eyed person with a curious nature but who hasn’t quite figured out where to take his life, let alone where life is going to take him. I hope he figures it out and finds his own sweet spot – no pun intended. After our nice half-mile conversation on the way to the truck and back, Kirby went back to the Bee Girl kiosk. Ollie and I walked around the market for another half hour or so, checking out the baked goods, produce, pickled vegetables, food, and crafts that were being offered. By this time many of the vendors were closing up for the day and it was time for us to go as well. As we left the plaza, from three booths away I heard the shout, “Goodbye, John!’ Goodbye, Kirby.