Fargo, North Dakota

Is it horrible to admit, that my only impression of Fargo, North Dakota was from the 1987 Coen brothers dark comedy?  

The city does pay homage to the movie with a wood chipper at the visitors center. We got there just after the center closed!  I was really looking forward to sitting in it with with my leg sticking out. BTW, the movie wasn’t even filmed in Fargo!  

Much like the flying pigs in NWA, local artists paint bison and you can search for them all over town. 

The little city is not rural (like I had in my mind).  It does, however, get an average of 50 inches of snow every year.  Very  much like I picture when thinking of Fargo. 

We met a local and said “We are heading out to explore”  and she said “well,  lower your expectations“.  Ha!  

The downtown area has super cute homes with well manicured lawns. The businesses are equally coiffed. 

There is a big street art scene - similar to NWA. Murals all over the place. 

We had no idea that Fargo is separated from Minnesota by a little river - aptly called the Red River of the North. I had it on my list to see the Stave Church. It was actually in Minnesota right across the bridge from Fargo. 

Built between 1996 and 2001, the Hopperstad Stave Church Replica in Moorhead, Minnesota, as a tribute to Norwegian culture in the area. 

The name comes from the support pillars (staves) in their interiors. Structurally, stave churches combine a Catholic, medieval, basilica-style church and a traditional Scandinavian log buildings.  

The Vikings believed that dragons guarded against evil and have their place next to religious art and crucifixes. Wood dragon heads on the roof and the shingles are designed to look like scales of a dragon. 

A local school guidance counselor had a dream to build and sail a structurally accurate Viking ship. He researched all aspects of a period ship and built “the homecoming”. He was able to test it in Lake Superior before he died. In 1982,  his sons, experienced sailors from Norway, a truck driver and 4 college students (a 13 person crew)  successfully sailed this vessel from Duluth, MN to Bergen, Norway. Amazing. 

We are spending three nights in North Dakota- so we added the state to our travel map. We will have to spend more time in Minnesota before we add it to our states visited in our RV map.