My Quality Day: Travel Day

Friday, August 22, 2025

Travel Day

The main project for everyone on Friday was to travel from the east side of the state to Lake Sakakawea in time for an evening hike.

There were clues to gather for the Scavenger Hunt, and we also had an agenda of our own. Of course I wanted to show Diane everything, but that wasn't going to work. She did want to see the two big railroad bridges across the Sheyenne. This is the Hi-Line Bridge in Valley City. It's double track up there!.

Then we went farther up the Sheyenne where it has been dammed to form Lake Ashtabula to see the Karnak Bridge. This one is single track. This bridge was there before they created the lake, because of course the valley was there and had to be spanned whether there was water in it or not. I loved seeing this bridge from a different perspective. The trail goes beneath both of these.

By then it was lunchtime. We stopped at a little cafe and had really good wraps or burgers. Acress the street was an unusually well-planned and attractive little park filled with flowers. The butterflies love the Joe-Pye Weed. Note both a Tiger Swallowtail and a Monarch.

This picture doesn't look like much, but it was the big "wow moment" of the day to me. This is a shot of the McClusky Canal from up above. The trail follows the canal for miles. While you are down there on the service road, the canal is your whole world. You just keep hiking with only the next bridge as your next goal. See McClusky Canal

From above, and this is a very busy place, it's just a thin wet line through the landscape. Here the canal is in a culvert under the state highway and the curved line is the service road that switchbacks up to cross the highway. The canal looks incredibly insignificant. I find this amazing, because it's such a huge part of the NCT North Dakota experience.

We arrived at Lake Sakakawea. This is the third-largest man-made lake in the US. It is created by damming the Missouri River.

We set up camp, wolfed down a fast dinner and arrived just in time for the ribbon cutting for a brand new segment of trail.

This is so new, I hadn't seen it. It's a three-mile secgment around the city of Riverdale, instead of following a street. It's closer to the lake with several views which is quite nice. Hikers in the hazy evening with the lake behind them.