Taking Care of Business in Bismarck, North Dakota

We've made it to another capital city, so of course we're going to take a tour of the capitol building. (Notice how Denisa is correctly using the words "capital" and "capitol" since she learned it back in Nebraska?!?) This tall capitol was called the "Skyscraper of the Prairie" when it was built in the 1930's.

At that time it was the only building for miles, but now the city of Bismarck has grown up around it. This skyscraper was ahead of its time in height and furnishings, as it seems more modern than most of the state capitols we have visited. The chambers of the house of representatives look quite different than most we have seen.

Instead of a tall dome overhead in the rotunda, this skyscraper has a forty-foot grand entrance with gold columns.

One thing unique to this capitol building is the "monkey room." We weren't sure what to expect when our tour guide mentioned that was our next stop. After all, we had already seen the legislative chambers where most of the monkeys hang out. Instead, she unlocked the door to a small alcove with solid wood paneling. That's when she pointed out the monkeys that were naturally found in the grain of the wood. Do you see his eyes, and ears, and nose?

This busy paneling also naturally holds pictures of other animals. Can you see the wolf ready to pounce in the center of this picture?

The elevator whisked us up to the top floor for a view of downtown Bismarck and beyond.

Our tour guide also pointed out one of North Dakota's claims to fame. They hold the Guinness Book of World Records for the most snow angels formed at the same time (8,962)--right here on the capitol lawn. Our guide pointed out the spot where she was lying in the snow on the day the picture was taken in 2007.

As we look down 15 floors today, the lawn is much greener than the day of the snow angels.

After riding the elevator back down to the ground floor, we spent some time looking at portraits of the people inducted into the North Dakota Hall of Fame. They would include the national mother of year with her 18 children, the most famous coach of the Chicago Bulls (Phil Jackson), the woman who played Police Woman on television (Angie Dickinson). But after driving through his home town of Stromsburg, North Dakota, in the motor home yesterday, Denisa took the picture of Lawrence Welk's painting.

Adjacent to the capitol is the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum. Because we love free attractions, we spent a couple hours at this nice museum.

The outside displays include some large specimens of rocks found in the state. Beside very long pieces of petrified wood, we found these round rocks called cannonball concretions.

Inside, we found exhibits about the history of North Dakota. One main section centered on very old history, when dinosaurs ruled this area.

One of their prize displays is this woolly mammoth skeleton. While most dinosaur skeletons in museums are made from castings from the original bones, this mammoth is 90% original bones.

Here on the weekend, we also went to the weekly farmer's market--called the Bismarcket. We're finding that it's a little early to find fresh produce up north, but we bought some great cinnamon bread and monster cookies at the market.

While in the city, we made the drive to Chief Looking's Village overlook. This was the site of an 18th century Mandan Indian village, and they had a glorious view of the Missouri River. 

Just like the vegetables are on a later time frame than we are used to down south, the flowers also bloom later up north. From our view from the flower garden overlooking the river, we see that irises seem to be at their peak bloom now.

The peonies at the state capitol are also just now coming into bloom. More importantly, being further north means that we are enjoying cool days. It also means that we are enjoying longer days. At the  summer solstice, we saw that the sunrise here was at 5:48 a.m., with sunset at 9:40 p.m. That's about 30 minutes earlier, and it stays light an hour later than where we were living before we retired in Oklahoma.

We finished our stop in Bismarck, North Dakota, with an unusual church service. It might look like we're at a baseball game, but we are really at Sunday morning worship. Once each year, eight churches in the city rent the ball park for a community church service. We just happened to be visiting that morning so we enjoyed the morning at the ball park before we're on the road again!