Drive to Walford City

A long day’s drive across North Dakota took me from quirky roadside Americana — the W’eel Turtle in Dunseith, built from more than 2,000 discarded car wheels — to the oil-and-farm country near Watford City. Along the way I saw the stark contrast between the state’s two economies: endless fields of corn, soybeans, and sunflowers on one side, and oil rigs punching into the prairie on the other. By evening, I rolled into the north side of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ready to settle in for the night.