{"id":3192,"date":"2011-10-17T15:38:23","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T21:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/?p=3192"},"modified":"2011-10-17T15:41:46","modified_gmt":"2011-10-17T21:41:46","slug":"there-are-a-few-places-i-have-no-need-to-ever-return-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/?p=3192","title":{"rendered":"there are a few places i have no need to ever return to."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bismarck, North Dakota is one of them.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not that we had a bad time there at all, because we didn&#8217;t. We drove the 430 miles in record time on Friday, and had a pretty excellent meal and cocktails at a place called the Toasted Frog. We managed to find the Gophers hockey game on at Buffalo Wild Wings down the street, which was amazing. There was a brief stop at a crazy hickish bar, and then we ended up at the Blarney Stone, which had an amazing beer selection for that part of the world. <\/p>\n<p>Saturday, I dropped Matt off at his conference (in the <em>true<\/em> middle of nowhere: a college well south of town on top of a bluff and next to a monastery), then went back to the hotel to sleep for another hour. I knew I wouldn&#8217;t be able to kill that much time wandering around Bismarck, especially since it was cold and rainy and outside was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/queen_of_subtle\/6254572646\/in\/photostream\" target=\"_blank\">not the least bit appealing<\/a>. I checked out around 11:15, got coffee at Starbucks, then drove to see Mandan. (That&#8217;s Cindi&#8217;s fault&#8230; she said I had to because her dad is there.) I spent the appropriate amount of time in Mandan (about 15 minutes), then headed back to Bismarck. <\/p>\n<p>I went to the North Dakota Heritage Center, and was the first person there, even though it had been open for 2 hours already. I figured I could kill a good half-hour there, but ended up staying for over an hour. They had some pretty good exhibits on Native American history and a bunch of dinosaurs, plus some really entertaining <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/queen_of_subtle\/6254568750\/in\/photostream\" target=\"_blank\">photos of old North Dakotans<\/a>. Not to mention the FIGHTING SIOUX!<\/p>\n<div align=center><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/queen_of_subtle\/6254569496\/\" title=\"UND should definitely go back to the non-racist unis. by the queen of subtle, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm7.static.flickr.com\/6158\/6254569496_bfdeb54e7b.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"408\" alt=\"UND should definitely go back to the non-racist unis.\"\/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nAfter that it was all downhill. I got a vegetarian sammich from Erberts and Gerberts, saw basically every single aisle at Target, drove around to see the river, and even stopped at CVS for the couple things I missed at Target. I was still about an hour early, but by the time I got back to the college to wait for him, I only had a half-hour to kill. I had knitting, so that was fine.<\/p>\n<p>Matt hopped in the car and we tore the hell out of town before I died of boredom. We had a really impressive meal at the HoDo Lounge in Fargo, then got back on the interstate home. Matt was going to take that shift but was really sleepy, so I managed to get us the whole way home. (That&#8217;s 900 miles in two days. I&#8217;ve driven more than that, but I&#8217;m definitely out of practice.) We got home at 12:30am, and could not have been happier about that.<\/p>\n<p>And in case you didn&#8217;t hear me yelling all the way from the middle of nowhere, the Gophers swept Duluth, the team also known as last year&#8217;s national champions! We picked up the Saturday night game loud and clear on a radio station based in Ada. I have no idea where that is, but I appreciate them for rebroadcasting ESPN radio.<\/p>\n<p>In other news, we&#8217;ve been married exactly one month today!! To celebrate, we&#8217;re going out while you check out a <a href=\"http:\/\/pragmaticphotography.com\/weddings\/2011\/10\/17\/jenni-and-matt-minneapolis-sep-17-2011\/\" target=\"_blank\">preview of our photos<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bismarck, North Dakota is one of them. It&#8217;s not that we had a bad time there at all, because we didn&#8217;t. We drove the 430 miles in record time on Friday, and had a pretty excellent meal and cocktails at a place called the Toasted Frog. We managed to find the Gophers hockey game on &#8230;<a class=\"post-readmore\" href=\"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/?p=3192\">read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/po9qt-Pu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3192"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3197,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3192\/revisions\/3197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}