On Monday (9/18), I rode about 72 miles from downtown Fargo to Little Yellowstone Park west of Enderlin, N.D. (pop. 885), where I met Paul, elder brother of our friend Elizabeth in the Twin Cities, who took me to the nearby town of Kathryn, N.D. (pop. 64, including Paul), where I spent the night in a home that Elizabeth owns there.

I got an early start this morning. The photo below shows the sunrise from my hotel in Fargo at about 7 a.m., and I was on my way shortly after that.

There was a strong wind that day, but lucky for me, it was coming from the southeast, which is unusual for this area. There were a couple of stretches where I faced it as a headwind, but for most of the day, it was coming at me from behind and as a bit of a crosswind. No complaints there!

For years, I’ve read about serious Red River flooding risks each Spring. About 15 miles west of Fargo, I passed the site of a Red River Basin Flood Risk Management project which, like the public housing project I posted about over the weekend, is being funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law enacted in 2021.

On my way to Enderlin, I passed large seas of sunflowers on both sides of the highway. I understand from a respected source that even though Kansas bills itself as the “Sunflower State,” North Dakota leads all U.S. states in the production of sunflowers (and also canola). Enderlin (pop. 885) bills itself as a “friendly, progressive, growing community with deep ties to agriculture” that is home to North America’s largest sunflower processing plant. The town appears to be accommodating to bikes as well–a sign at a city park on the Maple River there indicates that overnight camping is permitted.

I crossed the Sheyenne River a couple of times today–which, given the river’s many twists and turns, were at points about 30 miles apart from each other. Here are a couple views of the Sheyenne.

Paul, an extraordinarily unselfish and generous soul, was kind enough to pick me up in his minivan as I was halfway up a sizeable hill coming out of the Sheyenne River Valley at the Little Yellowstone Park, a 27-acre recreation area about five miles from Paul’s home. From there we headed into Kathryn, the small town where Paul and ultimately his sister Elizabeth, who both grew up in Fargo, bought homes. Although Elizabeth lives in the Twin Cities, Paul has now lived in Kathryn for a number of years. He and Elizabeth were attracted to the town in part because of its name, Kathryn, which was also the name of their late mother Kathryn, spelled the same way, and having homes there is a way for them to honor their mom. I did some online research to find the origin of the town’s name and found a source that indicated it was named after the daughter of an unnamed “railroad man” when the town was founded in 1900.

Here is Elizabeth’s home, built in 1911, where I stayed.

A sign you see immediately entering the front door reminds you not to take life too seriously, since no one gets out alive anyway.

Paul is energetic and personable, and a stalwart son of North Dakota. He enjoys living here and also meeting cross-country adventurers (including hikers) who find their way to Kathryn via Hwy 46, a popular route across this part of the state that is what I’ve been on most of the day. Paul made me an excellent dinner and we had a great conversation that touched on a number of his passions in life–faith, family, horse-racing in Kentucky, and the Grateful Dead, to name just a few. Here he is, in the living room of Elizabeth’s house, where he used to live.

Paul’s other passions can be discerned in the custom license plates for his vehicles, depicted in the photos below.

Tomorrow (Wed., 9/19), Paul will return me to the exact spot on Hwy 46 where he picked me up (no cheating here!). From there, I will finish the job of climbing that hill out of the Sheyenne River Valley and ride about 60 miles to Jamestown, N.D. (pop. 15,750).