Random Photo: North Dakota Postcard ’01

I think we all should send a postcard in 2011. I used to more regularly. Here’s one from my 2001 research trip of the US Great Plains for Lonely Planet — sent to the LP staff in Oakland. Snippets on why the country’s least-visited state deserved a longer look:

• The proud CVB in Fargo is shaped like a grain elevator, gives free cookies and neglects to put a single attraction on its Fargo tourist map.
• The capitol in Bismarck looks like a Stalinist school of dentistry.
• Kev, the chef at Cowboy Cafe in Medora, – a completely round man – will sit down and talk with you for hours. Says ‘dang’ a lot.
• There were more visitors at the world’s largest holstein cow, at New Salem, than the state’s great national park.
• Fargo’s SkyWalk looks like an outtake from a Scorpions video.