Although we are 8-10 weeks from departing, I am beginning to think of our trip home to Maine from our new winter residence in AZ. This year, my wife wants to "swing through" Crosby, North Dakota, on our way home, to try to find the grave sites of her grandparents. I have been looking at the ND parks reviewed on this forum and many in proximity to Crosby do not sound very inviting. We are not looking for a mega-resort.......just a clean, safe, park with W-E (and a dump station). Any recommendations (on either side of the border) will be appreciated. Also, is this part of ND the natural gas territory that I've been hearing about? Will the parks be clogged with long-term residents?
Northwestern North Dakota is home of the Bakken Shale oil field. It may be the largest holding of oil in the United States. Not a chance finding an RV site within 100 miles of Williston, North Dakota. There were over 100 rigs staying at Walmart, which has today decided to evict all of them. Time your travels to keep on trucking thru to at least Miles City, Montana. and skip over staying in that area. May be better to drop down to South Dakota and use I-90 and take a day trip to the family graves.
The North Dakota State Parks limit the length of stays and don't allow "full time" residents. I would strongly recommend you check out their web site where you can register and make reservations. The site also shows availability at the parks. If you don't mind a bit of a drive from the park, I would VERY HIGHLY recommend Fort Stevenson State Park (We spent many summer weekends there when my wife and I were stationed at Minot AFB), in my opinion, one of the nicest state parks North Dakota has to offer (I have heard that Lake Metigoshe is really nice too, but we never stayed there). There are a few SP campgrounds in the Williston area as well and they will likely have room but they are a bit of a drive as well. Again, look at the SP web site (Just Google it) and call ahead. If you plan on staying at Ft. Stevenson, they have the north loop that is all pull through full hook up's with enormous, level, and well groomed sites. If you are military affiliated, Minot AFB also has a Fam Camp that has W/E and a dump station (before we left they were talking about making them full hook-up).
Thanks for the "heads-up", KC. I heard that ND was booming with oil assets, but hadn't paid much attention to exactly where the work was being done. JBH...the state park suggestion is a good one. I just reviewed their web page and there are a couple of possibilities that are not too far from Crosby. I'm glad they take reservations. Thanks to both of you for they help.
Don, they also only allow 14 days per month, so the parks should be available if you reserve early...also, there are no black flies, but the skeeters are just about the same as downeast Maine so you should feel right at home.
We drove thru that area on the way to Yellowstone last year and it was extremely busy. About half of the traffic on the road are big trucks. It was around lunch when we went thru and we didn't consider staying. We turned South and went down towards Sturgis. It is beautiful country, but not really a good time for RV'ing due to all of the shale oil activity. I wish we could have a lots more of it and get the fuel prices down. We keep shooting ourselves in the foot on domestic energy.
QUOTE(Lindsay Richards @ Feb 15 2012, 09:22 AM) [snapback]28792[/snapback] We drove thru that area on the way to Yellowstone last year and it was extremely busy. About half of the traffic on the road are big trucks. It was around lunch when we went thru and we didn't consider staying. We turned South and went down towards Sturgis. It is beautiful country, but not really a good time for RV'ing due to all of the shale oil activity. I wish we could have a lots more of it and get the fuel prices down. We keep shooting ourselves in the foot on domestic energy. The oil production in North Dakota will be great for America and our intermediate and long term supply of oil, but it is not going to substantially reduce oil prices. There was an article recently talking about the housing crisis and the boomtown atmosphere where both local officials and oil executives explained that the bubble could burst almost overnight since extracting oil from shale requires oil prices in excess of $70.00 a barrel to be profitable. All that horizontal drilling and fracking costs a lot of money. A lot more goes into the cost of a gallon of gas than the cost of the crude. Transportation, refining, delivery all cost money. Even simple things like when the wholesale cost of crude rises $1.00 to your local gas station, they will have to raise the price by $1.02 to cover the increased costs of credit card processing, since each transaction will have a higher dollar amount and credit card fees are a percentage of the total transaction. Plus when that wholesale value rises that $1.00 the delivery company has to pay that extra dollar for delivery, so the delivery charge for the fuel rises. It is truly a vicious cycle.
I think we are going to go ahead with this route home. We've been talking about making this swing into Saskatchewan for the past 5 years, and every year something has come up, causing us to put it off. I guess if I can handle freeway traffic around Philly, NYC, Hartford, and Boston on our way home, I can handle a bevy of big oil trucks on the secondary roads of ND. With the aid of Google Maps and sector info from Ottawa, we've found the location of the family's homestead. It's in SK, right on the US border, just west of the crossing from Ambrose into Marienthall, SK. Now to find the grave sites, which we believe to be in the old Bromhead/Mount Green Cemetery (discontinued). It will be an adventure. We'll make reservations shortly and pack our bug spray. One nice thing about life in the Arizona desert is, if you are bitten by an insect here, you die shortly and don't have to put up with the itching (only joking).
QUOTE(MaineDon @ Feb 15 2012, 04:23 PM) [snapback]28798[/snapback] One nice thing about life in the Arizona desert is, if you are bitten by an insect here, you die shortly and don't have to put up with the itching (only joking). ROTFL....
