June 4 – 6 East Grand Forks, Minnesota
Red River State Recreation Area
Our drive through the countryside, admiring all of the grain silos.
About an hour from the campground, was suddenly interrupted by………….what?????? You’ve got to be kidding!!!
Tornado Warning!
We did notice the skies getting darker as we rolled down the road, but thought it was just a thunderstorm building off in the distance. Well crap!!! “Let’s pull over and look at all of our radar gadgets”. Hum. Not looking good. We’re in the middle of nowhere – no safe place to pull into or under. We decided the best and safest thing was to turn around and go back about 35 miles or so, to the Rest Stop we had just been to. At least it had a solid brick building if we needed to hunker down. We rode out the nasty storm in the parking lot – checked the radar again – the worst had past – off we went – whew!!!
Scary to say the least…..
When we arrived at the campground – right downtown E. Grand Forks, we both said to each other “this is a really strange place to have a campground”. Not knowing the history of the place, I said it looked to have been a previous neighborhood. Sure enough, after reading the pamphlet at the registration office, that’s exactly what it was – previous to the flood in 1997. FEMA purchased 500 homes and other buildings along the Red and Red Lake Rivers. Now it’s a 1200 acre recreation area which includes the campground. This is a unique blend of natural and urban. Very interesting!!!
East Grand Forks is in both Minnesota and North Dakota. Cute towns separated by the Red River. We did a bit of exploring but since we were only here 1 full day, errands took up most of our time. And besides that, the wind advisory for 60 miles an hour winds, isn’t fun to walk around in LOL!!!
Saying goodbye to Minnesota………………….
