Day 38 — Minot to Devils Lake

July 20, 2021. Glorious cloud cover today, partly I think from the smoke of wildfires. So I stole a march from the sun and heat and wind. Instead of stopping for the day at the halfway point in Rugby I kept going, 126 miles to Devils Lake. I got up super early again and enjoyed the cool temperatures to crank off the first 45 miles to towner, where I had what’s become my go-to place for food, the Cenex stations, which are often the only places with food in these small towns. I wolfed down a couple egg and sausage biscuits, stocked up on Gatorade zero and energy bars, and began the all-day push to Devils Lake.

The challenge became the wind. At this time of year, the prevailing winds are from the Northwest. But this summer, and for this entire trip, they have been from the southeast. Whenever the road bent more to the south, or the winds shifted to come more from the east, it would slow me to a crawl, then the winds or road direction would mercifully shift slightly, hitting me on the right side instead of in the teeth, and I would be able to get my wheel speed back up again. This went on for 11 hours until I finally made it into Devils Lake, where I got a cheap room and went right to bed.

The name “Devils Lake” is a calque of the Dakota words mni (water) wak’áŋ (literally “pure source”, also translated as “spirit” or “sacred”). The Dakota consider it a holy place because it’s the home of the underwater serpent Unktehi. European-American settlers mistranslated the name to mean “Bad Spirit Lake”, or “Devils Lake”. The Christian concept of the devil is not present in Dakota philosophy.

Because Devils Lake is endorheic (closed lake), the lake tends to be much higher in salinity than are lakes with outlets to river systems. Salinity levels in the lake have been one prominent aspect of the debate over diversion of lake water, with questions of the potential environmental impact of the diverted water on downstream rivers, lakes, and communities.