Snow Tourist

Traveling is all about visiting new locales and seeing interesting and unusual sights, isn’t it? When you think of exotic travel, the Taj Mahal or Great Wall or the Parthenon or Pompeii may come to mind.

But for someone like me, from Seattle, where annual snowfall is only about 7 inches (according to NOAA), seeing large amounts of snow is as fascinating as any of these more typically exotic sights. This makes a trip to the Fargo area in winter (annual snowfall of 41 inches) as fascinating as visiting India, China, Greece, or Italy.

You don’t buy it? Okay, I guess I’m just an easy tourist. But on a recent trip to Minnesota (just over the border from Fargo), I found myself captivated by large amounts of snow and ice and all that means. Falling from the sky, collecting on the ground, being shoveled aside, freezing on the lakes. I guess I’m easily amused, but we toured Detroit Lakes all day looking at amazing sights like these.

Ice houses on Detroit Lake. The little bit of ice we sometimes get on lakes in Seattle isn’t firm enough to hold a stuffed animal, let alone a building!

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Can you imagine staring out your sliding door on the second floor and seeing nothing but snow?

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A mountain? No. This was just the swept aside snow residue from one very average parking lot.

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It looks like a tunnel, but it’s just a typical sidewalk in Fargo.

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That’s a big truck…and you can hardly see it over the wall of snow.

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Ya gotta love the optimism of thinking about summer fun in Detroit Lakes when the temps are below zero.

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