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North Dakota, where glacial Lake Agassiz is currently re-forming
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Glacial Lake Agassiz seems to be re-forming... (Entry by Scott and Todd)
(Jun 13th, 2005) After consulting with locals who know the Red River well, and looking at the National Weather Service Flood Forecast, we have decided to wait a few days here in Wahpeton/Breckenridge until the water goes down. The water in the river has never in the last 100 years since record were kept been this high on this date. A little more than a week ago it was at it's normal levels, 5 times less water than it currently has. It's currently over 5,000 cfs and is normally closer to 1,000. In Fargo, some roads, bridges and parks have been closed and we can't camp in some of the parks here in Wahpeton/Breckenridge because of the flooding.

Some of the information we used to make this decision:

1) Our own experience coming down the flooded Bois De Sioux, where we had two bridges that we could not fit under due to the high water. With the high currents, the risk of getting trapped under a bridge is a bit scary.

2) Also the water is out of it's banks, way up in the trees on either side. This makes it difficult to pull over in case of an emergency.

3) Large debris is floating down the river too.

The forecast indicates that it should drop during this week and we expect to be able to put back on the water towards the end of the week. This means we probably won't be in Fargo until early next week.

Does this mean we are way behind?

Yes and no. For perspective, Eric Sevareid and Walter Port had to graduate from High School before they left Minneapolis on their trip in 1930, so they didn't actually leave until three days from now. So we are way ahead of them and expect to remain that way. We still expect to finish our trip by the end of August.

Our itinerary on our website still shows our best guess for how far we'll go each day, but when we start back up we'll probably be 6-9 days behind it. We knew this might happen so aren't too worried about it.

This also allows us to soak up more of the local culture and history which is one of our main goals anyway. A local family here, the Niesche's, have adopted us on their farm. Warren and Cindy and their two kids Joel and Mark are just awesome people and for us city kids it's a treat to get to work on the farm a bit. They have 8 horses (including a cool Scottish Highlander named Tootsie) , 4 sled dogs, a bunch of cats, some cows and an absolutely amazing sulcada tortoise named Snoopy Escalator Casper. He is 7 years old and weighs 50 lbs. and will probably live a few hundred years and grow to up to 300 lbs. Pictures forthcoming...

Oh they also have Spike the hedgehog and Peanut the guinea pig. We'll also be visiting with a local historian named Naomi Lakken so we will be keeping busy; might even get to bale some hay.

One of the cool local things we learned already is that 'where three rivers meet, no tornado shall come'. Apparently this area has had many close calls but no tornado has ever struck...pretty cool. Now if they could just figure out how to make the rivers never flood....