About mid afternoon we pulled into Lake Sakakawea State Park. The state park is awesome and sits on the shore of Lake Sakakawea. The lake is a reservoir in the Missouri river basin in central North Dakota. Named for the Shoshone-Hidatsa woman Sakakawea, it is the third largest man-made lake in the US, after Lake Mead and Lake Powell. We have a great view of the lake from our site. There is a little Cantina in the park and we had lunch there. Homemade food! Baked Beans, ham,and real mashed potatoes which we split.
Off for a tour of the Garrison Dam Power Plant. The last tour for the week was at 3pm and we made it. We had never been through a power plant before. The Garrison plant began in 1947 and was completed in 1954 at a cost of about 300 million dollars. It is the 5th largest earthen dam structure in the US. First we saw the turbines (7 feet hight, 18 feet in diameter). Next came the generator room with the 5 generators and then the penstocks which carry water from the Intake Structure to the case around the turbine. The diameter is 24 feet and length is 1650 feet and you feel like a dwarf standing next to them. Garrison is a multi-purpose project providing for hydroelectric power production, irrigation, flood damage reduction, navigation, fish and wildlife, municipal and industrial water supply. It was really interesting.
Back to camp for dinner and then went for a bike ride around the park. We saw 2 mule deer feeding along the tree line. Riding up to a point overlooking the lake and boat ramp we sat at a picnic table and enjoyed the view. We hope to put our boat in on Monday. We rode back to camp and relaxed in our chairs watching the sun set over the lake.
We did a lot today so we broke it into two parts so we could also get more pictures in ....
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