20090619 – Fargo

20090619 – Fargo

After breakfast we continued East on US2, exiting on the East side of Grand Forks Air Force Base, then a few miles North and East to Kelly's Slough National Wildlife Refuge. We spent a couple of hours there, picking up at least one new bird for the trip. We thought that access to the Refuge during spring migration, which finished a few weeks ago, would be very nice. There is a wide gravel walking trail giving great spotting scope view of shallow lakes on each side. Signs there indicated that this is very busy in high season. Today we saw only one other birding party of two. We finished there before noon.

After the short drive into Grand Forks, we filled with gas at Cenex, and saw Al's Diner next door. This seemed more attractive at this point than the Perkins we had considered (Tim had almost fixated on) for lunch. The wraps we ordered held us through the afternoon.

We had considered Grand Forks our destination for the day, and the point for Tim's Amtrak boarding. Yet, it was early in the afternoon, so we headed for Fargo, the next Amtrak stop Eastbound, thinking that would also give me convenient access to the tire store tomorrow.

Entering Fargo we in fact saw the OK Tires store and noted it for tomorrow. Then we headed for the depot to buy Tim's ticket. Historically, Fargo had 3 depots, a few blocks apart. We saw the old Northen Pacific depot first, then learned we needed to go to the Great Northern station which is now the Amtrak depot. Both these depots have been repurposed and saved as historical sites. This is very fortunate—the NP building had been scheduled for demolition before becoming the City of Fargo Park headquarters. The Great Northern is now a bicycle shop, with only the detached luggage outbuilding now serving Amtrak. These are both very attractive buildings--classical depots. The architect for the NP depot (?? Cass) designed several other depots as well, including the one in Little Falls, Minnesota and, Tim thinks, the Minnesota State Capitol as well.

Downtown Fargo also has a nice coffee shop across from the NP depot (Babb's—which copied several themes for the Seattle Public Market for it's decor).

After learning that the Amtrak station would open only at 10:00PM, we headed for Lindenwood Park where Tim had earlier secured the last available RV hookup (by phone). The few sites there were crowded together, the remnant of a larger park that was underwater due to flooding on the Red River. We walked around, trying to catch a bird or two, had soup from cans in the RV, watched a couple of innings of a kids baseball game, talked to our neighbors (which resulted in a referral to a supposedly great restaurant in Bemiji) and made phone calls (Tim talked good Fargo to Karen). Tim finished packing and we got to bed ~9:30.

Birds: Killdeer, Mourning Dove, Blue-winged Teal, Northern shoveler, Gadwall, Canada Goose, Red-winged Blackbird, Redhead duck, Cliff Swallow, Norhtern rough-winged Swallow, Mallard, Marsh Wren, Sedge Wren, Bobolink, Western Meadowlark, Clay-colored Sparrow, Barn Swallow, Common Yellowthroat, Lesser Yellowlegs, Marbled Godwit, Great Blue Heron, American Avocet, Spotted Sandpiper, American Goldfinch, Song Sparrow, Turkey Vulture.