North Dakota

While North Dakota is probably not high on your destination list, if you have the time and are touring South Dakota, I highly encourage you to visit.  Granted many of the activities are a little spread out, you will enjoy the scenery getting from one place to the next. Along the road we did a little unorthodox sightseeing getting up close and personal with a herd of black cows, checking out some bales of hay, and chatting up a truck driver at a gas station stop.

Hay and cows play a huge role in our national economy and it was a great learning experience to see and hear about them, which we never get to do in the big city of Los Angeles.  It gave us an opportunity to get acquainted with a way of the life that is completely different from ours but yet is connected to us by the things we buy in the supermarket.  We often don't connect where our food comes from or how it gets there but as travelers I am glad to know that both my kids and I now have a much greater appreciation for all thats involved before it ends up in a package.   Driving across the prairie we learned the true meaning of homesteading and the difficulties of life on the vast grasslands where sometimes no trees grow as far as the eyes can see.  We also learned about the Native American tribes and role of nature such as the buffalo and fish in earlier times and today.  Everything totally came together in Medora where we channeled the spirit of President Teddy Roosevelt and what it means to be an American.  To value hard work, live an honest life, and to respect nature while living alongside it are all things we took away from our visit to North Dakota.  If you make it that far on your quest to explore all 50, I am sure you will too.