Blue Goose ~ Day 13

June 13, 2014 ~ Grand Forks, North Dakota to Devil’s Lake, North Dakota

The distance between these two cities is a little over 100 miles which is close to what I want to average per day on this trip, in part because gas is my biggest expense. I haven’t figured my fuel efficiency yet but will soon and hope to get 25 mpg on the open road. It was one of the reasons I bought the Dodge van. My days of driving too fast are done, due to insurance rates and cost of fuel. US2 is a divided highway all across ND; the speed limit is 70, so it’s like an interstate but with more access. 

Again, I found a Starbucks 0.7 miles away and spent a couple of hours there before going to Kelly’s Slough NWR which is very close to Grand Forks, just three miles north of the highway and is a relatively small refuge. On one of the many cross country trips that Maria made with me (usually to help with all my crazy back and forth Michigan, Oregon and Montana moves), we stashed the kids (Gin and Adam) in a motel and went out to Kelly’s Slough. We went down a grass-in-the-center marginal road to explore a bit further when a pickup truck pulled in behind us and we were a little freaked as we couldn’t turn around and had visions of evil coming after us in a truck, but of course, that didn’t happen. I don’t even remember if the guy backed out, squeezed around us or exactly what happened, but we always laughed about it when recalling Kelly’s Slough.

It has the typical North Dakota habitat of open water (prairie potholes made by retreating glaciers) surrounded by reeds and cattails and fields. The thing is though, there were clouds of mosquitoes here, which I remembered from previous visits…literally clouds of them. No way was I going to walk any trails, but I did think this would be a perfect place to really test my Skeeter Beaters. So I got them out, quickly put them on and sat for an hour watching Cliff Swallows, either collecting mud, which they use to build their homes under bridges, or swooping under and over the bridge. I’m getting better at swallow identification, which is another humbling birding experience for me. There are seven species in the US and five of them summer in North Dakota. They fly fast and erratically continuously. Occasionally though, they will settle down, often communally, on wires or railings or even on the ground, which then makes it easy since they all have distinctive markings. I'm working on it....  

I saw one Wilson’s Phalarope and a Killdeer frantically doing it’s broken-wing thing as it probably had a nest nearby. I had always read about that but never saw it until today. 

The sky became more and more cloudy as I drove west. 

I turned south for five miles at Michigan, North Dakota to drive through Lambs Lake NWR. It is one of dozens of small North Dakotas refuges that are “managed under conservation easement agreements with the private landowners, and visitor entry is permitted only with landowner permission..” but in this case, there was a caveat stating that “it can the viewed from an unpaved county road…” So I turned onto the unpaved road and immediately saw a huge jackrabbit which loped away across the fields as I approached. I had never seen one before. It had tall white upright ears and almost seemed mutant, but only because I keep seeing bunnies and rabbits on this trip. It was very quiet with waterfowl in all the wet places.

Lambs Lake NWR

At the east end, there were planted fields on the south side of the road and the refuge on the north. So I wondered about the back story for all these private lands….I’ll need to research this. I drove by one farm on this road and wondered if this was the landowner. Do they get paid a yearly fee? Can they rescind? It is in perpetuity? 

I had a motel reserved through Priceline. I wanted to see if I got a deal or not so asked the desk person what the rates were before I told I him I had a reservation, and it turned out I did save $40. Good. It was a new motel and completely adequate. Devil’s Lake is surrounded by large lakes, both to the north and south. I worked three hours and then headed out to Lake Alice NWR, which was something of an adventure as I could never actually get to the refuge per se. For reasons I still can’t figure, the it is now a lake and all the roads leading to it suddenly end where there used to be a through road. In fact, I would see the road continue on the other side of water, which was too deep to drive through.

Trying to get into Lake Alice NWR

It was getting later, the sky was not settled and vast cloud formations were moving about, although I wasn’t too worried as it was cool. (Otherwise, I would, of course, had tornado on my mind.) I was driving on farm roads that showed on my phone but often having to turn around because of high water. And some of the roads were basically farmers' driveways, ending in their yards, so I would have to turn around there also. But the birds were incredible and everywhere. I saw several Eared Grebes close to the road, Avocets, Willets and hundreds of ducks.

American Avocet near Lake Alice NWR

I finally got on a road that was being rebuilt which was wide, high and dry and made my way back to a major highway, having circled Lake Alice but only being in the refuge about five minutes while before getting turned back by water. 

It felt very weird to drive in this flat landscape with fields that go forever and then suddenly realize that what I was looking at was wind-whipped water of another huge lake or maybe still part of Lake Alice. I could see no banks, although there was obviously something to keep it contained, but it seemed as if the water would start spreading out over the land. There was a house I could see from the highway that appeared the same level as the water. I wondered how much hydrologic management and flood control is always happening in this part of the state. But no wonder it is a haven for waterfowl and every duck hunter's dream. Every single pothole or lake had birds, proportional to the amount of water. There was also a walleye catch-and-release fishing deal this weekend, and the motel had a huge sign noting “Fish Cleaning Station on Site.” 

My van was very dirty and muddy by he time I finally got back to Devil’s Lake. I had been watching the sky with ever-increasing gigantic, edgy cloud formations passing overhead. I slopped at a Subway and then worked a couple of hours before finally soaking in a warm bath and crawling into a king size bed with five pillows. Yes Esther, I it did feel good.