Chapter 13, Jamestown, ND to Winona, MN, 2026

When we left the missile launch facility, we drove back to Jamestown through Cooperstown. This was a small agricultural community that was established in 1882.  

As we were driving past a large park like area, we found a very old structure.

Also, located in the park-like area was a very large brick building that was identified as the Griggs County Courthouse. Because it was the weekend, everything was locked up and we couldn't visit. 

 

 The building seemed out of place because it was so large and the entire population of Griggs County is 2,239 people. 

 The return drive to Jamestown again took us through miles and miles of cultivated fields. 

 

 

As we drove throughout the northern tier of states, in these heavily cultivated areas, we kept coming across large storage facilities. At first, we thought these were silos, but they are not. We discovered that silos are used to store seed for local livestock. Grain  bins are used to store recently harvested crops. Then they can be held in climate control containers until commodity prices are favorable for their sale.

 

These storage facilities were huge, and they may give you an idea of just how much agriculture is occurring in the northern states. We would see facilities this size every few miles on every road we drove on.

The pictures make the weather look ominous and the temperature was in the mid 60s and very windy. 

This line of trees was actually a living snow fence that was protecting a ranch house and related barns and equipment sheds that seem to be connected to all of the large cultivated fields we were driving through. 

I would hate to be here in the winter!

 

    We also went by numerous large ponds and small lakes that seem to be naturally         occurring on the depressions of the undulating landscape.  In those ponds, we saw

large flocks of Swans and American White Pelicans.  Both birds are very large.  

   

Swans have a wingspan of 5 to 8 feet.

American White Pelican have an 8 to 9 foot wingspan!

 

We stayed in Jamestown, North Dakota, and used that as our home base when we visited the missile launch facility. When we made our reservations for our stay at that RV park, the owner told us that his park was located about 1 mile down a dirt road, but that the road was smooth and graded. 

He also said that there had been some frost heave on the road and that might make that portion of the road a little bumpy.  We told him that while driving down the dirt roadwe would just slow down and take the bumps gently. When we arrived at the dirt road, we had our first experience and, hopefully, our last experience with frost heave.

 It turns out that frost heave is caused by water that is trapped below the road surface. When that water freezes, it expands pushing the soil above it up at an uneven rate. That would have made the road a little bumpy, but that's not the rest of the story.

 

It turns out that when the ice melts, it does not go away, but returns to a watery state under the now heaved topsoil.  That essentially turns the topsoil into quicksand, which the motorhome did not like. When we first entered onto the frost heave portion of the road, I could feel the front tires starting to wiggle as we entered onto the darker portion of the soil in the pictures. I recognized that things were softer than they looked, and we kept our speed up and slithered across the quicksand and popped out on the other side. OK. We were at the campground for several days, and by the time it was time to leave, the road had dried out and we had no trouble at all getting back to the highway.

While we were at Jamestown, we visited their old town. There wasn't much to it, but they did have a giant buffalo.

The buffalo didn't look so big in that last picture, but look closely at this next picture to get a better idea of how big it is.

 

There were quite a few old buildings that had been moved to this location from all over the county and they were interesting to look into.

They had a small buffalo herd located on a hillside between the old town and the freeway, but all of the buffalo were hiding in the trees down in the creek bottom. This is what the big buffalo looks like from a long ways away. 

When we left Jamestown, we moved further east, and spent the night at a really nice county park in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.  We have found in the northeast, a lot of the small towns have county parks with RV hookups, and we have enjoyed staying in the small parks.  We were the only people staying in this park, except for one of the rigs that belongs to the work campers that cared for the park.

The park was on a beautiful lake that had a nice boat ramp and a small fishing pier.

We only stayed at this park one night and then continued east to the town of Winona, Minnesota, where we went to visit with our friends, Tom and Enid.  They took us on a nice tour around the town, and we visited Tom's hangar at the airport, as well as a beautiful overlook of the city and the Mississippi River.

One evening they took us out to dinner to their favorite restaurant.  Tom said he always gets the pan fried Walleye and so that is what we had because we had never had it before.  It was delicious and if you ever have a chance, try it!

We then continued our trip eastbound and our next stop was Madison, Wisconsin.  En-route, we stopped for fuel, and we can't remember whether we shared our diesel fuel secret with those of you that travel and use diesel fuel. We belong to a group of travelers that belong to an organization called Open Roads.  It is some type of a co-op that brings together RVers into one big conglomerate. They then negotiate trucker- style fuel discounts at numerous truck stops in large fuel stations across the country. We have been members for many years and it doesn't cost anything. One condition was that you connect a bank account to your Open Roads account so that the fuel that you buy is immediately deducted from your bank account.  

Click HERE for a link to Open Roads

 

The following picture shows you the pump price and the price we paid through Open Roads.  Open Roads does charge a small fee on each transaction, but it is clearly described when you sign up and it is so small that it is insignificant compared to the savings you have over the course of the trip.

 

 After leaving Winona, we continued on to Madison, which is the capital of Wisconsin. As we drove around town, we found the state capitol and figured we'd go check that one out too. We are glad we did.

 

 Compared to the concrete skyscraper in North Dakota, this looked beautiful. Once we found a place to park, we walked to the building and found that we were able to walk right into this building as well, although most of the offices were occupied and taking care of business. 

 

When you first walk into the building, the view is spectacular no matter which direction you look. There are actually six entrances to the building that all enter directly into the rotunda area. From there, you can walk to various offices. When we first entered, we took a picture of the first thing that we saw. This became important later.

 

 You can see from the above picture, there is a mural on the wall between the two arching hallways, moving away from the center of the rotunda. There were actually six of these arching hallways, all leading to various offices. Between each arching hallway was a mural. As we wandered around the capitol building for about an hour, pretty soon, all of the archways looked the same. After we felt that we'd seen everything, it was time to leave and the problem is, we could not remember which archway we needed to exit through to get back to our car.

 

 Fortunately, we had taken the initial photograph of the mural on the wall when we first came in, so we called up the picture on our phone, and then walked around the circular center of the rotunda until we re-created the picture. Then we knew that was the archway that we had entered through and when we exited, there was the pathway to our car.

 

  The previous picture showed a view of the inside of the dome at the capital. It looks quite elaborate, but a picture just doesn't show the amazing detail that is present throughout the building. Hopefully, the following two videos can help explain just how amazing this building was.

 

  When we finished at the Capitol, we returned to our motorhome, which was in a beautiful RV park.

 

 After returning to the motorhome, while looking for something stored under the motorhome, we found that there was a compartment door that would not open. We decided to fix that before we continued on our way to Napanee, Indiana, where we were going to visit the factory where our motorhome was built. 

 

The only way to unlock the stock compartment door was to access it from the other side of the motorhome. I was reminded of my claustrophobia as I crawled through the belly of the motorhome to get to the stuck door latch. Fortunately, it was an easy fix.

 

 We will continue to keep you posted on our travels and we hope you stay in touch, 

 

Tom & Suzie

 

 

Chapter 12, Bismarck, ND and Minute Man Missle Control, 2026

After leaving the capital of South Dakota, we moved on to Bismarck, North Dakota. We continued to see miles and miles of agricultural fields. We have mentioned this several times, but that is because the scale of the farming operations across the country are immense and very impressive.

As we moved into North Dakota, the terrain went from flat to a rolling landscape, but  that did not stop the farmers from planting every available piece of soil.

As we would drive along these fairly narrow, two lane highways, we kept coming across farm equipment that was being repositioned. They drove on the highway just like everybody else and the reason they are able to do that is because there isn't very much traffic. The equipment was massive and would take up the entire lane and if they were going in the opposite direction from us, it took a lot of care to pass them without touching or leaving the roadway because of  our size. 

When we arrived in Bismarck, we found our campground for the next few days. It was located inside a city park that was massive. There were over 100 RV sites as well as at least that many tent sites with bathrooms and showers scattered throughout the park area.  Even though we arrived in May, the trees still had very few leaves on them. That's when we learned that there are two seasons in North Dakota.  July, August, and winter! It was cold the whole time we were in North Dakota and the wind never stopped. Good news was that it was sunny most of the time.

The campground was immense, and when we got there, it was almost empty.  When we spoke with the park ranger when we checked in, we commented that the park looked kind of empty. They told us that they were sold out for the weekend and we were lucky to have gotten a spot.  As you can see from the video, the park was lush green, and would be amazing once all of the trees filled in with leaves. 

As we walked around the park, we saw that the trees were much different than we were used to. They had very thick bark and grew to a giant size. 

 

As we drove around Bismarck, we discovered the state capitol building and history museum. We were surprised that the capitol building was a modern structure.  This internet photo gives you an idea of what it looks like.

We went inside the capitol building and looked around after going through security.  We found that the majority of the building was unremarkable, especially compared to what we had just experienced in South Dakota.

 The house and senate chambers were also quite modern.

 Located next to the state capitol is the natural history museum. It was quite large and covered a variety of topics including Native American history and agricultural history. They also had a large archaeological display. 

  

After a hard day exploring, we were hungry and found a little hole in the wall pizza parlor where they bragged about Chicago style pizza. We had no idea what that was, but we got one just to make sure we didn't miss anything.

It was one of the best pizzas we have ever had. Unfortunately, we didn't get to go back and have another one because it was time to move on to Jamestown, North Dakota.

Once we set up camp in Jamestown, we took a day trip north out into the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cultivated fields for as far as the eye can see.  That is where we found the Ronald Reagan Minuteman missile historical site.

This was a deactivated missile launch control center from the Cold War era. It consisted of a single story, office and residence complex sitting on top of an underground bunker system that was used to control Minuteman missile launch sites that were dispersed around the launch control center. 

Notice how tall the chain-link and barbwire fence is around the facility. You can see how tall it is in comparison to the silver colored car that's parked just outside the fence. That fence will be important later in the story.

After we bought our tickets to tour the facility, we went on a guided tour. The facility was always manned 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by Air Force personnel. There were both officers and enlisted men assigned to the facility. They acted as security, maintenance, and launch personnel.  A typical shift at the facility was 72 hours on site (3 days), and then three days back at the base located at Grand Forks Air Force Base.  There were untypical shifts as well. 

These would occur in the winter when the snows would come. Our tour guide told us that there were times when it snowed so hard and so much that the crews were not able to rotate back to Grand Forks.  During those times, the snow could pile up so high that the men were able to walk out of the facility, over the top of the chain-link and barbwire fence described earlier. 

The snow would completely cover the facility, and made it impossible for the crews to leave because the roadways were completely covered. There was a helipad located at the facility and helicopters could be used to ferry crews, but that was also dependent on the weather.

After watching a short video on the construction of the site, we went on a tour of the above ground facilities.

 Remember, this was before internet or wifi and they were stuck here for 3 days at a time trying to stay alert.

 

They had a mess hall and an attached kitchen.

Mess hall

Kitchen 

The cooks had separate quarters so they wouldn't disturb sleeping team mates as they got up early to start preparing meals.

They had a bunk room for the crews as they spent their 3-day shifts here.

 

The facility manager was a non-commissioned officer and had a private room. He was responsible for all of the operations above ground, including maintenance, security, and caring for the men.

 

The front of the building, closest to the road, was the security office. This is where the security teams were dispatched from. Their weapons were also stored here. Note the old technology, including the old style fax machine and computer. The interesting thing about this room was they had an overall view of half of the facility grounds, but the glass was not bulletproof, and  if an actual assault of the facility occurred, the men in this office would be sitting ducks, although they were armed with M-16 rifles.

 This completed the above ground facility tour. The next step was to go into an elevator for the trip underground to the missile control facility. The entire tour group crammed into the elevator, and then the tour guide, closed the mesh gate, and the elevator began its descent underground.

I was the last person to board the elevator so I was closest to the gate that closed off the elevator from the elevator shaft.  I am very claustrophobic, and as the elevator descended, I became more and more uncomfortable, realizing that if the 50-year old elevator motor that parts are no longer available for were to quit, I would be very, very unhappy! It was somewhat comforting to look at the back of the elevator, over the tops of all of the other passengers' heads to see  the rickety wooden ladder that was leaned up against the wall directly below the escape hatch. At least there was a possibility for us to get out of this mess because it was too late to turn around.

 This is the 50-year old elevator motor the parts are no longer available for. Tour guide told us it usually works fine.

Once we survived the descent underground into the missile command  module, the tour guide opened the gate, allowing us out of the elevator, and I soon realized that my problems were not over. The control center was also triggering my claustrophobia.

When we got off the elevator, we turned to the right and went into the equipment module. This was the location where the auxiliary generator was crammed, along with all of the electronic devices that were used to support the 2-man crew of officers that were always on duty underground ready for immediate missile deployment.

As we walked into the equipment module, I looked back the other direction and saw that there was another tour group, now going through the launch control module. That's when it occurred to me that they were going to be taking my elevator back to the surface!!

The equipment module and the operator's module were both protected with gigantic blast doors.

Inside the equipment module, you'll notice that the floor is painted red. The color doesn't have anything to do with the story, but the floor does.  The module is almost egg shaped, and the red floor does not sit on the bottom of the pod. It is actually suspended from the ceiling on giant spring loaded shock absorbers. These shock absorbers are designed to hydraulically dampen any shock waves caused by incoming close by nuclear blasts.  They do not think that the complex would survive a direct hit from a nuclear device, but  the underground portion could survive a nearby blast.

This is what one of the shock absorbers that holds up the floor looks like.

The yellow and black edge tape marks the edge of the floor and you can see the gap between the floor and the edge of the actual pod.

When they originally built the facility, they dug a gigantic hole and then began building the underground pod structures. They had to build the structures in segments so that all of the equipment that was too large to ride on the elevator could be installed prior to the enclosing of the pod with concrete and rebar.  In the following picture, the LCEB is where the equipment was located and the LCC is where the missile launch crew spent the majority of their time, waiting for the big one!

This picture shows the relationship of the launch control facility to the surrounding missile fields. There were no missiles located at the launch control facility. They were all located around the launch control facility from 3 to 15 miles away. There were 10 missile silos controlled by this launch control facility. In the picture below, the red arrow shows the missile control facility and is pointing at the equipment pod portion of the facility we're in now. The blue arrow shows an outlying missile silo with a large white trailer erected over the silo. That trailer would contain a missile that would be lowered down into the silo. The green arrow shows a fully loaded  missile silo.

Suzie is standing with her back at the large generator enclosure. This was a soundproof box that held a very large diesel engine which was connected to a very large generator that was used to power the facility in the event of external power disruption.

Next, we headed into the actual missile launch control room.   As we were walking to the launch control room, we walked past the now missing elevator.  Much to my relief, it was very slowly coming back to rescue me.

 

In the next picture, Suzie is standing next to the blast door that secures the launch control pod.

 We were moving from the relatively large equipment pod into the launch control facility, and just when I thought my claustrophobia couldn't be any worse, this happened.

This is the passage that you go through after you close the big blast door into the control room.  Inside the control room, it is very crowded with equipment lining all of the walls.

There was a very narrow doorway located in the corner of the pod and it turned out that the door concealed a tiny little toilet area. That definitely would not work for me!

 This is where the assistant launch control officer, sat.

We were told that they stayed busy studying the large 3-ring binder that you see on the table top in front of the chair. That three ring binder, along with other manuals, had to be memorized by each of the launch control officers. While these 2-man crews were away from the launch control facility, back at Cedar Rapids Air Force Base, they would have to spend time, every month, simulating missile launches and other situations that might arise while confined to their pod. They would also be given a test on all the books and manuals that they were required to study.  A 90% grade on the test was a failure and meant  losing their jobs or remedial training to continue their jobs.

This status board was directly in front of the officer sitting at this desk. Each column of lights represents a different missile silo assigned to this pod.

In order to launch a missile, first, they had to receive an authorization order directing a missile launch. That authorization had to be verified using code books that were locked inside this red box.

 Each of the officers in the pod had their own lock for the red box, and the box could not be opened until both officers entered their combination into the lock. Once the box was opened, each officer removed a code book which contained a launch code verification and a key. 

If the incoming order that they received was verified using the launch code verification system, then each launch control officer would go to his station and insert the key into the console. Then, at the same time, they would turn their keys and initiate missile launch from their 10 missile silos.

At this point, the missiles still would not launch. The missiles would not lunch until two officers located in a different missile launch facility confirmed the missile launch order and initiated their keys, verifying that the launch was, in fact, authorized.  Once all four officers agreed that the launch  order was valid, and they all turned their keys, then the missiles would launch. All of this redundancy was designed to keep one crazy person or crazy crew from initiating a launch by themselves.

The 2-man crew stayed locked in the below ground bunker for 24 hours. Then a relief crew would come down and spend the next 24 hours and then that rotation would repeat itself as crews came and went from the facility. 

While the crews were locked in the pod, at least one of them had to be awake at all times. There was a bunk for their use, as well as food storage and preparation equipment, so that they would not have to go topside to eat.

 We asked how the missile launch crew could escape the pod if the elevator were to quit. They told us that there was an escape hatch that could be opened that had a tunnel that went to the surface. That was a relief! 

Then they told us that when they put in the parking lot for the visitors, they paved over the exit to the tunnel!! This was the below ground hatch that used to lead to the surface.

 

You would have had to climb over a bunch of radio cabinets to get to the escape hatch, but I guarantee you, I would not have had trouble getting to that hatch.

 Finally, the below ground portion of the tour was over, and it was time to cram ourselves back on to the elevator for the long, slow ride to the surface.

 

There were a few pictures on the wall at the entrance to the visitor center. They helped explain what it was we had just seen.

The red arrow in the following picture points to a small star. That is the launch control facility that we are currently at. The diagram shows where all of the missiles are located that this launch control facility is responsible for.  Each star in the diagram represents a missile  launch control facility and each of the numbered circles represents a nuclear tipped missile.

Once we had escaped the underground launch facility, we headed back to Jamestown and prepared for the next leg of our journey. 

We know this was a long episode, but we hope you made it through.  If you think of anything that we should see as we head to the northeast corner of the country, please let us know.

 Tom & Suzie