July 11 Day 41 Pekin 58 miles
Roy suffered our second flat tire early this morning.

An early lunch at the bar in Warwick. The bartender was a bit unsettling. He wears a cowboy hat and speaks like the characters in "Fargo". One wall is covered with awards the owner's Clydesdale horses have won. The owner has sold a couple of horses to the Budweiser show horse team. There are hundreds of dollar bills taped to the walls, each with some obscure personal note written on it. Somebody will have to explain this practice to me. We talked with a local rancher. He told us that the weather changed in 1993. It started raining. Devil's Lake has since grown from 80,000 acres to 130,000. The farmers are growing more water-intensive crops now than they could before. Nobody knows how long this will last.
We stopped at Ft. Totten. It was a cavalry fort for some years, then an Indian school for half a century where the government tried to "civilize" the Indians. Massachusetts Senator Dawes counted himself a friend of the Indians. He cursed the Indians' lack of greed. "Selfishness is the cornerstone of civilization." Check out the "Indian Xing" sign.
The motel has both camping and rooms. We took a room. Roy "camped" in the gazebo. A storm blew some cold rain for a few minutes, then moved on. The grocery store has folded. Rice-a-roni and leftover sausages in our room. The motel arrangement is, the rooms are open. Pick one and call the number on the wall and the owner will come over. The owner is the farm loan officer at the bank. He told us proudly about how successfully farmers are growing many crops in North Dakota.