Day 26: July 3rd Lund's Landing to Parshall

Pictures: The Big Mosquito almost gets me (Sylvia pic)
Oil well with natural gas flare
Rock Museum manager Mrs. Jacobson(Sylvia Pic)
The museum’s Infinity Room(Sylvia Pic)
Seeing my fortune through the Rutilated Quartz crystal ball (Sylvia Pic)
Video of fireworks at the motel
We bid Jeff adieu and headed out on a 50 mile ride to New Town loaded with 6 extra liters of water since we wouldn’t be passing any towns or gas stations along the way. Beautiful country side now becoming dotted with new oil wells, tank farms and an occasional natural gas flair burning. A couple of years ago a large pool of oil, the Bakken Shale, was found that stretches for over a hundreds of square miles out here. We got stuck in a rain shower which lasted about an hour and cooled us down a bit. Otherwise a wonderful ride with much easier hills than we experienced the prior day. New Town was created from 3 Indian towns were inundated with the creation of the lake. At New Town we nabbed lunch then headed 17 miles out highway 23 to Parshall. These 17 miles was a downer. Strong head winds, lots of traffic, oil trucks, flat -bedded welders, etc. getting to Parshall drained us. At 3:30 we arrived at the Paul Broste Rock Museum which closed at 4. We paid our $4’s each but weren’t expecting much. The attendant offered us a quick tour then ended up spending an hour talking about all aspects of Paul Broste‘s life, the variety of rare and significant rocks in the collection and answering our many questions. He was a farmer and rabid rock hound. The glaciers of the last ice age ended in this area of North Dakota and they moved a tremendous variety of rocks to the area. The farmers pile them up in the field as they work and Broste would search through to find all sorts of valuable rocks. Broste also was the first to successfully develop a way to produce a perfect polished rock spheres using parts from a Model T. The Museum’s Rutilated Quartz crystal ball is the largest in the world. Smithsonian has asked time and again for the museum to donate some of its finds or it’s whole collection but it remains in a small town of Parshall, ND, off the beaten path but well worth the journey.
Tired and not wishing to sleep in a primitive site with only cold water, we went into town and we’re surprised to find a motel with $50/night brand new cabins (manufactured home/trailer type) to rent. They were wonderful; more than we could ever have wished for. We found out a lot about the town and how things had changed over the last couple years as the oil money from the big find started to roll in. It’s a county of millionaires now. The cabins we were staying in were purchased by the motel and plopped down in the parking lot to house all the oilfield workers/welders. Now things have slowed down a little but they didn’t have a vacancy for most of the last two years. Two Texan’s (oil imports) own and run the local café. They shared more of the local happenings while we feasted on rib eye steaks and drank pitchers of lemonade. That night we watched an impromptu fireworks display in the hotel parking lot and visited with a hard working welder named Darin who was kind enough to shorten our corkscrew/bottle opener with his angle grinder making it easier to pack.