The Enchanted Highway

So I already said it was a weird day with the rain and the long drive...but it only got weirder! I had been hoping to see the world's largest frying pan or ball of string or something but we found something just as good in North Dakota, about 30 minutes shy of Painted Canyon, Bandlands; The Enchanted Highway.

Betwixt storms, and under constant threat by Adam that we were going to be swallowed up in some death-by-locals horror flick, lies the highway. The first indication of which is an eye of metal with metal birds attached at the exit from the thruway. About 12 miles down the road...

Deer! But not just ANY metal sculpture of deer...

GIANT METAL SCULPTURES OF DEER! (That's Keith about to get crushed.) They are done by a local metal-worker that, according to Smithsonian Magazine clippings at the site "wanted to bring people off the main thruway into the small towns of ND that usually get overlooked... A sign as we were leaving the deer pointed away from the direction we came from even further into nowhere: Grasshoppers; 7 miles. So of course...we had to see what it was all about!

And...there they were, amidst rain, large blades of metal grass, and beneath a rainbow; giant grasshoppers. Enchanted...for sure.

At first they were scary...

but the boys fought them off...and of course...we got lured still further into the madness of said highway.

to Where's Meghan? IE: "Fisherman's Dream."

We finally decided that we had been over-enchanted...now approximately 40 miles off-course and couldn't bare to get caught still further from our destination, especially with sunset only a few hours off and with the intention of actually seeing the badlands instead of just passing through...so back we went...WITHOUT hitting any of the local wildlife (Keith almost hit a pheasant) and also managing to escape without any repercussions from the local cannibals that Adam was so afraid of! And we still had many hours to go today!