My wife and I visited our Son in North Dakota over a long weekend. Our son is getting his Master Degree in History in a few weeks so we though we would visit him before he leaves the University of North Dakota and moves to another University for his PhD. On Thursday at 5 am we boarded an airplane in Medford for a flight to Portland and then on to Minneapolis and then on to Grand Forks, North Dakota. The flights were uneventful and our Son met us at the Grand Forks "International" Airport and took us to a nice Holiday Inn Express near Best Buy. We had an early dinner at Arby's, did a little shopping at a Super Target nearby and then went back to the motel for an early night. We had been up since 2 am. On Friday he took us on a tour of campus and showed us the fancy Hockey Arena (picture above), took us by his campus office which he shares with other History Graduate Assistants and then to his apartment. We went into the Grand Forks Super Wall-Mar to meet one of his friends who works there and also ran into his main Professor. That night he took us to a downtown bar for dinner and drinks for a party being thrown by some of his graduate assistants friends. On Saturday another of his friend's accompanied us on a trip to the "big city" of Fargo. The day started out with a snow storm (yes in May) but the sun came out in the afternoon. We toured some used book stores, and had lunch at "Old Chicago and then went to the mall. That night we had dinner overlooking the Red River in Minnesota in East Grand Forks at a nice restaurant. We got to met several of our son's friends and they were uniformly nice and I know it will be hard for him to leave them when he moves on to work on his PhD. On Sunday he drove us to Fargo to catch a plane for Minneapolis. We had a three hour layover at the Minneapolis airport and had a nice Mothers day lunch at TG Fridays before we boarded a plane for Portland and then back to Medford, Oregon. We flew Northwest Airlines for the flights between Portland and Minneapolis and there and Grand Forks and I was not impressed. The planes for the most part were not kept clean and the service was poor. In the future all things being equal I will try and pick another airline. We got home tired about 11 PM and our cat was happy to see us. It was good to see our Son again and enjoyed meeting all of his friends. The people are very nice in the Midwest and but for the weather and lack on interesting geography it would be a nice place to live.
