Life After Work: Another Long Drive!

Ordinarily, we like to take some time to see the sights while driving. However, we are on a mission these first three days to get to Saskatoon by Friday. Today we needed to get from Madison, Wisconsin to Bismarck, North Dakota. We drove 1120 km in about 12 hours. Our best friends today were signs like this:

We hit quite a few construction areas but, luckily, most weren't as bad as yesterday's and we maintained a decent speed.
Since we would be driving most of the day Marilyn started to take a few pictures of the passing scenery. This first one was a bit disconcerting! Fortunately, it was being towed.

This truck was carrying giant farm fans.

We imagined the mayhem that would happen if these rolled off the truck!

Giant boxes with pink liners flying all over. No idea what was inside.

By mid afternoon, we had reached Fargo N.D. This is their visitor centre that is modeled after a grain elevator. It's the best centre we've seen so far. We were a bit perplexed by the wood chipper that was mounted on a platform out front. That is until we saw this:

The 1996 movie Fargo apparently involved a wood chipper. We haven't seen it but will when we get home. They had basically built a shrine to the movie with original scripts that you could read along with numerous artifacts. The name of the chipper is Eager Beaver?

The most exciting part of the trip, if one is a Tragically Hip fan, was when we came to the hundredth meridian, where the great plains begin, just outside of Bismarck. We had the song playing, sunroof open, and windows down in spite of the 34 degree weather. I also pulled over on a very small shoulder of the 75 mile per hour highway to get some pictures. I was thinking of getting out but was advised that I shouldn't get killed before we attended the wedding on Saturday...
Here is the Hundredth Meridian looking north:

And south:

If you aren't a Hip fan, maybe not too exciting. But I loved it!

We finally arrived in Bismarck at 6:30 and used some Radisson points to get a room in their "downtown" hotel. This is the view of some of the city centre. There was some kind of music fest going on down the street with a band and food trucks and a small crowd. We had read that there was a bbq place in town that we had tried when we were in Oklahoma City on our Route 66 trip. It wasn't as big or as crowded as the one on OKC but the food was just as good. Oh, it was called Famous Dave's!

We decided on beer and sandwiches tonight. Marilyn's was a brisket sandwich with grilled pineapple. I'm not sure why there was pineapple in a bbq joint...