There is a single lane gravel road that winds around the property but a gate prevents access by vehicles to all except a few organizations. Each organization has their own lock on a chain around the gate. The chain is designed so that you only need to remove one of the chain's locks to unlock the gate.
One of the few signs of the former use of the property was a spur railroad track by which coal was delivered to the plant. Trees now grew between the railroad tracks.
The city of Minot owns the property now and has a few wells scattered about the property quietly humming as they pump water.
A group built a sweat lodge for their ceremonies. The lodge is a jerrybuilt structure with many heavy blankets and quilts covering the structure. Even though it looks round, the lodge has seven sides as the main organizer/builder is spiritually fond of 7.
In front of the lodge is a pit for a large fire to heat 28 rocks. Then the people bring seven rocks into the lodge at a time for different stages of their ceremony. This is what Ed, the trivia host, told me the other night.
Around the outside of the lodge here and there were tools to cut and split wood for the fire, ladles to spoon water on the hot rocks inside the lodge, and other miscellaneous items. Odd to find items like these out in a public place available for anyone to take. I guess they don't get many visitors, else those who do visit are honest.
The Souris River ran near, but not close, to the sweat lodge. When I asked Ed, he said they don't jump in the river after exiting the sweat lodge. Well, between the ice and low river levels much of the year, there probably isn't much of the river available to jump in to cool off.
As you can see from Rod's GPS map of our wanderings we walked much of the property's perimeter. The "bump" on the lower right side of our route is our walk over to the sweat lodge.
As we walked back to Rod's pickup a Canadian Pacific freight train roared by on the main track.
It was dusk when we got back to Rod's pickup.
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