Small Hands and Big Feet

When the impromptu Trump T-shirt stands started popping up on the streets of Fargo a few days ago, I was starting to wonder whether it was time to bid adieu to the garishly red state of North Dakota. When it was announced that the tiny-fisted Heat Miser, himself, would be fomenting the masses at an arena two blocks from our hotel, we left town for Minnesota with squealing tires and a puff of smoke that would have made the Road Runner proud. Goodbye, Fargo. It’s been fun. Enjoy your orange tyrant. 

Bought it to wrap fish

I buried Paul.

Northern Minnesota is basically Michigan’s Upper Peninsula but with different licence plates. So, for me, it feels very familiar and comfortable, like MASH re-runs. And since Minnesota continued to fulfill our newfound love of giant fiberglass statuary, there were plenty of opportunities to snag selfies with giant pike, Volkswagen-sized rodents, and, well, actual-sized Paul Bunyons. 

Let's just cut to the chase, shall we.

Remember the Brady Bunch episode where Peter and Bobby had a fight and painted a line down the middle of their bedroom? This is where they must live now.

Sasquatch-sploitation

There's a little Minnesota town named Remer that claims to be the bigfoot capital of the world. A few years back, a Remer resident captured a grainy, dimly-lit image of a shadow on his automated trail camera, and now a large portion of the town’s economy is based on Sasquatch post cards, books, and life sized cutouts. One of the basic cable shows even filmed a bigfoot hunt there. If you buy into the premise, I suspect the locals, with a wink and a nudge, refer to it as “being Remer’d.”

And speaking of which, we ended our day’s journey in Hurley, Wisconsin, near the Michigan border. Hurley has the distinction of having more strip clubs, per capita, than anywhere else in the US (sorry, but that includes you too, Las Vegas). Of course that little tidbit of information was largely absent from the Booking.com review of the Days Inn we stayed in, but I guess that explains why the dollar bill change I received from the front desk had glitter on it and smelled faintly of cotton candy body spray. Hmm, I wonder how often Hurley bank tellers get tested for STDs. 

Check out this National Geographic video about Hurley...

Why all the chainsaws hanging from the ceiling at Brewsters in Ironwood? To cut your pasty of course.

Eat at Joe's.

We ended up walking across the river into Ironwood, Michigan and drinking in a bar that had old chainsaws suspended from the ceiling. In the UP, that’s completely normal, so I will comment no further. Ironwood is also home to Joe’s Pasty Shop, maker of world famous pasties for over 50 years. By the way, pasties are meat and potato filled wads of dough, not the PG-13 rendering nipplewear probably much more at home across the river in Hurley, WI. 

This should probably be the sign between Hurley, WI and Ironwood, MI

Go Bison!

The two and a half week, Fargo-centric portion of our endless summer vacation is nearly complete. Soon we’ll be heading toward Michigan and then finally back home to Naples. I’ve never vacationed so long that I’ve had to get both an oil change and a haircut. I think I'm even developing a Fargo accent, dontcha’ know?

Why did the giant chicken cross the road?
To meet the blues band publicist.

Since the bloom is basically off the Fargo rose, sight-seeing wise, we’ve spent the past few days making day trips to neighboring towns, and, probably more than anything else, satisfying our new found fetish for statues of grossly over-sized fauna. Fortunately, neighboring Minnesota is a bonanza for these types of attractions. There’s even a website naming them all, so we are obviously not alone in our fiberglass adoration. We met a fellow fetishist, Susan, next to the giant prairie chicken in Rothsay. She’s a publicist for an award winning blues band out of Minnie/St. Paul. Since we’re basically besties now, go check out the Dee Miller Band. 

You otter not kiss giant rodents.

Play "Free Bird," man!

We also made a reluctant return to Moorhead (the land of Plains, Trains & Assholes-I’d-Like-To-Kick-In-The-Shins highlighted in an earlier post) to attend a Scandinavian cultural festival. After aimlessly wandering around booths of handmade scrap wood; nasty-ass, anise-laced baked goods; and plastic viking helmets, what I learned is that if I want to be true to my Nordic heritage, I should probably learn to scowl more and forge an appreciation for accordion music. Since I don’t see either of those happening any time soon, I may have to suppress my Finnish genetics and pretend I’m from a country with better dispositions and less polka. Nashville, perhaps.

Me, checking out the business end of Pete the Pelican.

Smells like poutine spirit.

Speaking of heritage, we also went to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota for a day of sunning on the beach and eating unholy amounts of poutine. Although “the DL” (I swear to Odin, that’s what the locals call it) is a popular, up-north resort area for summer escapees of the twin cities, it also happens to be near where the Karvinen side of my family landed in America when they left Finland (presumably on big rafts of accordions grouted together with anise cookie dough) back in the 1800’s. I didn’t bump into any of Klan Karvinen, but I felt a very special bond with the aforementioned poutine, and we’re considering adoption. 

Me posing next to Teddy, which is far better than me posing in a teddy.

Buffalo-bombed.

Namaste

Forkin' Around

Since my sister-in-law had the day off from work, she and Wife hung out the “No Boys Allowed” sign, and I was left to explore on my own. I don’t know exactly what they had planned, but since I grew up with lots of sisters, I’m pretty sure it involved talking smack about other girls ("Can you believe Meagan’s shorts? Oh, my gawd!"), doing each other’s hair, and pouring over issues of Tiger Beat (in his defense, Parker Stevenson is a babe). 

Grand Forks, ND and East Grand Forks, MN. East meets West.

Anyway, I took the opportunity to point the minivan toward Winnipeg and drive north until my lack of a passport became problematic. Since we have been to Winnipeg before (how could we not, it’s the birthplace of poutine for God’s sake), I ultimately ended up only about an hour north of Fargo in Grand Forks/East Grand Forks. 

The horizon continues. The free space on my iPhone did not.

As you head north out of Fargo, the landscape becomes a little more extreme. It seems flatter, if that’s possible. The few trees that dot the landscape are permanently torqued toward the east in response to mother nature’s relentless blowjob from the other direction. And although it was a beautiful summer day, there was still a foreboding sense of how unforgiving this area must be come winter time. 

Mr. Bergman, North Dakota is on line one.

I mentioned flat. It’s more than that. For some reason, I was particularly stricken by how sharply defined and abundant the surrounding horizon was. It was a constant, linear reminder of how far in the middle of nothingness I was, and that has a way of making you feel small and a bit melancholy. Who knew a single line could change your mood like that (well, cocaine users do, but that’s just what I've heard).

Oh, honey, don't touch the big metallic dog poop.

I once read that the indigenous peoples of Alaska and northern Canada (if you’re a Trump supporter, I believe the word you’re looking for here is Eskimo) are significantly more adept at solving Rubik’s Cubes than other groups. The theory goes that thanks to the nearly identical color of the snow, ice, and sky in the Arctic, they lack a discernible horizon most months out of the year. This leaves them dimensional-ly untethered and forces them to hyper-develop spatial relationship, problem solving skills. If that’s the case, then one could reverse-reason that native North Dakotans, with their ever-present, laser-etched division between heaven and earth, struggle to even free their Rubik’s Cubes from the boxes they are shipped in. 

I bet they’re savages at Sorry! though.

Rather sobering riverside monument of actual levels of various devastating floods of the past. Note the normal river level in the background.

For a better sense of scale of just how deep some of the floods were (and how painfully bright the sun was that day).

Chia Head.
Giant James Cameron Avatar edition.

On the way home I was feeling a little tense from the drive, so I brought myself to Climax.

Apparently there's a women's section, but as usual, I struggled to find it.

Worth a Thousand Words

Purging my pictures from the iCloud. 

There's no rhyme or reason here, just content.

Yeah, I know how it's really pronounced, but if your inner dialog is narrated by a prepubescent 9-year-old like mine is, you giggle every time you see the signs. 

And it only gets better...

I like big buttes, and I can not lie.

I'm pretty sure the dress code that night was "Mandatory Evacuation of the Trailer Park Casual."

When I walk into a bar and a video of Brian Ferry is playing, yeah, I'm basically staying a while.

Same great bar. Close-up shot of my wiener.

I guess they put these signs with pictures of fire hydrants on them next to fire hydrants in case you can't see the fire hydrants next to the signs with pictures of fire hydrants on them.

And look who wakes up the minute you mention fire hydrants...

 

 2 dogs, 7 legs. Yet, somehow it works in Idaho.

North Dakota Ham Bone.

Found him at the museum. I named him "Art."

Found this puppy roaming the streets of Fargo. If he's yours, you'll have to wrestle him away from the girl with the bluebird tattoo.

So don't waste your dog.

Pablo Picowso

Not surprisingly, this was hanging in a shitty cowboy bar in Broadus, MT that had the absolute worst service.

In Fargo, they take their birdhouses very seriously.

I was impressed with the intricacy of many of the small town welcome signs we passed.

(Incidentally, George Michael would have been 55 next week.)

Tom looks sad. 

(Perhaps he's remembering George Michael.)

  I have no idea what's going on here. Feel free to add your own caption in the comments below.

Oh, and keep it clean. That's my wife and my sister-in-law, you animals!

Eatin’ in Wahpeton

This morning we drove about an hour south of Fargo to the small, farming town of Wahpeton, North Dakota. Since I know that many of my readers are (nearly) as culturally sophisticated as we are, it’s probably unnecessary to mention that our quest was to see “Wahpper,” the world’s largest catfish sculpture. And even though the Wikipedia article I read (well, mostly read) about Wahpper was a veritable masterpiece in non-sourced, collaborative reference, it still left us wholly unprepared for the up-close majesty of a 5,000 lb. fiberglass carp perched atop a man made hill in a partially occupied RV park.

Goose bumps. 

We stand together, hand in fin.

Although one possible reaction could have been to drop to our knees and weep in the shadow of its greatness, in all honesty, my left knee has been bothering me a bit lately, so we agreed to drive to a local saloon and gently drop into a booth instead. 

Bloody Mary Bar?
Yes, please!

Mostly, when picking a new restaurant or bar, I rely on a combination of experience, instinct, and tons of research, and like when paper-training ferrets or creating an iTunes playlist, you hope the extra effort is rewarded. However, on some very rare occasions (as when you’re emotionally spent from basking in the presence of giant, novelty aquatica), we just stumble into an establishment blindly and hope to get lucky. 

This time, we got damn lucky. 


Although this blog contains a cumulative foodie page that I’ve been updating since we left (and most of you have been ignoring), today’s post is also going in that same direction and is devoted to the most unexpected dining surprise I’ve experienced in a long time: 

The Boiler Room in downtown Wahpeton. 



I can not tell you that The Boiler Room had the best food, drinks, or service I’ve ever known. These are claims I never make lightly, and it simply did not, and in a town of less than 8,000 (and that’s including the giant fish), experience dictates that culinary expectations are relative, but whether you are in a market of 8,000 or 800,000, you can always tell (and appreciate) when a restaurant is operated by someone who gives a damn. The Boiler Room is such a place. Anyone can open a restaurant. It’s a select few, in my experience, who can attend to the hundreds of details, large and small, that make for a consistent, positive dining experience. 

In my opinion, before food is even mentioned, first you need service. I don’t care if your authentic pizza oven was imported brick by brick from Neptune or you only use locally-sourced, free-range mozzarella sticks. If you employ inattentive, untrained, and un-invested help, don’t even bother trying to sell manna from heaven. Open a DMV instead.  Our server, Kimmy (or possibly Kimmie, with an ‘ie,’ but, God, I’m really hoping it’s just plain Kimmy), was friendly, accurate, informative and seemingly invested in the success of the establishment. And although that speaks volumes about Kimmy, it also speaks to the training she received and the reasons she received it. 

The food, by any standard, was very good. More importantly, however, was that you could tell it was personal to someone. Homemade items, unique combinations, avoided cliches, and upscale plating all pointed to a chef with a personal interest and not just a line cook with personal debt. 

Sorry, Charlie.

For me, in terms of importance, decor generally ranks lower than other aspects of the dining experience, but I understand the value of presentation and appreciate when it is done right. The Boiler Room was retrofitted by professional designers, and, like Jim Gaffigan, is clean, quirky, and appropriate for its time and place on this planet. 

So regardless of which things you might find more relevant when identifying a great joint, remember that the devil is always in the details, and finding one that knows how to exorcise all those little bastards is rare. It lets you know that they take their endeavor seriously, and even that resonates with a smart ass like me. 

Count on it.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, there’s no catfish on the menu.