Saturday, April 30, 2022

North Dakota: Don’t Think There’s Nothing to See


Approaching Bismarck, North Dakota Airport

When you exit the TSA security zone at the Bismarck airport, the first thing you encounter is a Triceratops head. A real skeleton. Dinosaur fossils are abundant in North Dakota. The state’s largest Dinosaur Museum is three miles from where we are staying tonight in Dickinson. But alas, we’d have to wait until Memorial Day for the Sunday hours to start. 



Sitting in a wood and glass case like the kind they have in a school science room. The exhibit was so low-key that I almost missed it. But holy moley, it was the kind of thing that any dinosaur lover would drool over. 



Larry and I got into our rental car and started driving (actually, he started driving; I started navigating) west on Interstate 94. We’re headed toward South Dakota in the direction of Mount Rushmore. The terrain we’ve passed along the way is wide open and (dare I say…monotonous, or more tactfully, much of the same). Until we came across giant metal geese in the air. 



They are part of The Enchanted Highway, a stretch of road where an artist exhibits the world’s largest metal sculptures.


And then there were the trains. Running along the right side of our car. I felt like I was in the middle of Eric Carle’s picture book, “Freight Train.”  Moving. 



Tank Car



Box Car



Hopper Car


A Mind That Wanders is Not a Bad Thing


 


Nathan Sawaya is a lawyer whose mind was blown open by Legos. About this 4,003-piece Lego sculpture he created, he says: “A Mind That Wanders is Not Always a Bad Thing.” 


That sculpture is one of many multi-thousand piece creations on exhibit in “The Art of the Brick.”  Over seventy sculptures are on display. The biggest is an 80,000 piece T-Rex. 






A quote from the artist posted on the wall says, “When I was a lawyer, I quickly came to realize I was more comfortable sitting on the floor, creating sculptures than I was in a boardroom, negotiating contracts.”



I took my grandson to see them in the grand, defunct Savings Union Bank building in downtown San Francisco. 




You don’t have to enjoy them with a kid, but it’s a scream if you do.