Came over the border at the Port of Carievale (during our entire 40 minute travail, we were the only car to pass through) and had take the State Highway 5 east...
to get back to the 83 heading south. It was a long day, starting to get late and we were hungry so made tracks for Bismarck, ND where we had planned to spend the weekend. Interestingly, Highway 83 passes right through Bismarck, the capitol of North Dakota, and in fact passes right in front of the capitol building...
a most unusual, utilitarian, almost soviet style building that at no time would ever be mistaken for the capitol, were it not for the sign up front. It seems that the old, original building burned down, and they built this !!! America is nothing, if not diverse and frequently surprising. Too bad there are so many of our own people trying to destroy it. If we could just stop looking for demons to make war against and spent time looking in the mirror and coming to terms with the demons within...
The weekend in Bismarck was a quiet one. It is a sleepy little town really, barely a city in the usual sense, and since little if anything goes on on the weekends, almost nothing was open, leaving us floating aimlessly in search of a decent cup of coffee. The one bright spot was a bar/restaurant called The Toasted Frog on the corner of Broadway and 4th Street right in the middle of "downtown".
The atmosphere was busy, urban hip and totally incongruous to the rest of the town which seems frozen in the 1950's, abandoned in the 70's, still half empty of people and purpose, and seeming to have given up any effort at relevancy beyond its governmental function. The Frog turned out to be the bright spot in our stay, an anomaly that provided reason enough to make this our pitstop on the next trek north.
The beer was cold and good, the crowd, young and hip, and the wood fired oven pizza was great. Thin crispy crust, tasty, well seasoned sauce, and the right proportion of cheese more or less to the crust, resulting in a glop factor of 1.5 for me and zero for Jackie who likes a bit more cheese than me. I always ask for the pizza to be well done, but didn't this time to see how it would be. It was close, but needed another minute. Jackie thought it was just fine, and she was probably right . I am just too picky when it comes to pizza. But it was a hell of a lot better than most of the stuff they are trying to pass off as pizza in NYC, so it is beginning to seem like I am having to go out to the mid west for a good pie...
Toasted Frog photos by Jackie
It tasted as good as it looks and if you should ever find yourself in Bismarck, tired and hungry for something good to wash off the dust of the prairies, check out the Toasted Frog. You'll thank us.
The next morning, we were back on Highway 83, hoping to make it from Bismarck to Valentine, Nebraska by evening. Unfortunately this was only a ten day trip, so there was not a lot of time to linger.
Pablo and Jackie
No comments:
Post a Comment