More of Mohall

At Mouse River Park.

Keith's cousin Don and his wife Ruby

Old and new cabins

Again, I am trying to add our original e-mails and photos of our trip from June. Following is also the original e-mail.


Dear Family and Friends,

One purpose for our early camping trip this year was to investigate some new camping areas close to home and to visit a few of our relatives who we haven't seen for a while. Mohall is close to the Upper Souris (Souris is French for mouse) River National Wildlife Refuge. Therefore we thought that would be a good place to start our adventure, and visit my cousin at the same time.

So that evening after the Flower Shop tour, Don and Ruby took us to the Mouse River Park where there is a nice little cafe. We had a good meal and then toured around the park a little even though it was just starting to rain. It is quite a resort area that was built during the WPA era. The purpose was to build a dam for flood control on the Souris River which flows through Minot. (I hope I got all this right.) All this created lake Darling which is known far and wide for its good fishing. There are many miles of roadways there too that offer some spectacular sights of wildlife, birding etc. The resort still has a lot of old and somewhat run-down summer cabins (eg. old trailers etc.) but are slowly being replace by more modern buildings including some log cabins. There is also a very beautiful RV campground there with 60 full hookup sites. It is definetly a place we will go to sometime and spend a lot more time (read: fishing) there. I don't know for sure if we will be able to afford it or not as they charge a whopping $13 a day to camp there. (I know of a free spot with a hot tub closer to Minot but the fishing isn't very good there.)

As a sideline: several years ago there was a plan to enlarge the flood control on the Souris River. This plan would have flooded the resort area and much more. So (and I forget exactly who it was) someone came up with a plan -Citizens United to Save the Valley. The plan was to "sell the valley by the yard". In other words, you could buy a square yard of the valley and get an actual deed for your land. It was encouraged to buy several "plots" and send the deeds to all your relatives in Norway. That way, it would be next to impossible for the government to gather up and buy all the deeds to all those plots of land. And it worked too!!!

Until next time....Love, Keith and Karen