The Great Road Trip of 2017......Part Twenty Nine/Day Twenty

Part One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Part Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Four of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Five of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Six of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Seven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Eight of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Nine of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Ten of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Eleven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twelve of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Thirteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE  
Part Fourteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE  
Part Fifteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE 
Part Sixteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Seventeen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE 
Part Eighteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Nineteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE 
Part Twenty of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Four of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Five of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Six of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Seven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Eight of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

When last we met we had just crossed over the state line into North Dakota......

Nice sky and an encouraging billboard, "Do Your Best."  I concur.

More sunflowers........

When we got to Fargo I told Hubs I wanted to visit the local Visitor Center.

This piece of equipment was featured outside of the Center......can you guess why I wanted to go here?

                                        

What a grand new building!  Hubs initially stayed in the car while I went inside.  He noticed that local kids were going into the building and coming out with bags of fresh popcorn.  Color him puzzled.....

As I entered the Visitor Center I saw a coffee and popcorn machine right by the door???

                                      

Then I saw some display cases...........

                   

These cases had all sorts of props and memorabilia from the movie "Fargo".  It's a good movie with a great cast of actors.  If you haven't seen it, you should go find it on some streaming service.

There were photos of the cast during production too.

It was shame they weren't selling this t-shirt in the little gift shop inside the visitor's center.

Here's where it gets weird(or maybe just quirky), they had the actual woodchipper machine used in the movie inside the visitor's center.  It has a rubber foot sticking out of the hopper(if you know, you know).  They had Winter trapper hats(google it if you live in the South and have never been North), and a short piece of lumber so you can reenact a scene from the movie while one of the employees there takes your photo(with your phone or camera).

Here's Hubs posing with me, though he didn't don a trapper's fur hat like I did.

Such a grand two story Visitor's Center with all sorts of brochures of things to see and do in the area and books for sale and reading tables like in a library!

And a small gift shop off to the side.

We spied this colorful bison on the way out.

Then we checked into our hotel for the evening, dropped our bags and went out to find dinner.

We hit a strip mall nearby with two options, Smash Burger and Huhot.  After Val in Iowa had raved so about Huhot we chose the Mongolian Grill.

A cute sign as you entered........

We perused the appetizer and dessert menu while we waited for our drinks.  Then it was time to get in line.

Huhot is a buffet style place.  You grab a plate and make your meat selection, then your veggie selections, and lastly your sauce option(s).  Then you queue up and wait your turn to have one of the "chefs" put your dinner on their large circular flattop grill and they cook it for you.  All cooked your dish is returned to you to enjoy.  They have a communal tip jar and when someone puts a tip in they all chant together while they cook.  Too funny and fun!

Here's my plate of vittles(you get soup and rice too).  My first plate was a bit spicy(the sauce was as I combined two sauces on that plate.  My second plate I went with just the non-spicy sauce which was more to my palate's liking.

For the price I didn't think it was a good deal so I wistfully glanced over at Smash Burger on the way back to the car(since I had never had that before either as there are none of either restaurants back in our part of PA).

Since it was August and the days stretch out until 8 something in the evening we had time to kill so we made a stop in town across the road from the "Sons of Norway" Lodge in Fargo.

After having my DNA tested a few years earlier it turned up that I had a small amount of Viking blood coursing through my veins.  Then after years of genealogical research I had discovered earlier that year that a statue of my 33 x Great Grandfather, Rollon Ganger-Hrólf the Viking or as he is also known ROLLO.  He was Count Rouen, the first ruler of Normandy(in present day France).  It is still not known whether he was Norwegian or Danish but we can say with certainty that he was Scandinavian.

More on Rollo HERE.

Rollo is the 3 x Great Grandfather of William the Conqueror, the progenitor of the House of Normandy in England.  The direct male line descendants of Rollo ended with Henry I.  Henry's daughter, Matilda, was the mother of Henry II, who laid claim to the English throne and was the first of the Plantagenet rulers.  Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine's son, John I, became King of England(him of Magna Carta fame).

Me and Great Grandpa.  A statue in stone of Rollo made in 1863 by Arsenne Letellier was erected in the city or Rouen, France in 1865.  Two copies of this statue done in bronze were cast, one being sent to Alesund(the supposed birthplace of Rollo and the other to Fargo, North Dakota.

That marque is on the Sons of Norway Lodge across the way.  This area was settled by Norwegian settlers thus a Rollo statue being prominently displayed in Fargo. 

History of the Rollo Statue

The statue now stands in a small park near the Elim Lutheran church in Fargo.

We saw this portable stage nearby.  I suppose some musical entertainment was getting ready for that coming weekend.  But we were losing daylight and headed back to the hotel for the night.

Sluggy