During the Winter of 2020-2021 I had thought about videoing my motorcycle rides through the abandoned towns of western North Dakota when it warmed up in May. I was inspired to do this from watching the “Adventure Rides” on YouTube that were made primarily by BMW motorcycle riders.

You can either scroll back through my blog post articles or use the search bar on my website to read about some of the old abandoned towns that I had looked up and done some research on.

Due to the Coronavirus travel restrictions, and some other problems, I had not been back to my home in a small Idaho town from approximately August of 2019 until March of 2021. I had no idea, but during the 1-1/2 years that I was gone, about 100-200 people from California had moved in. This may not seem like enough people to affect anything, but it completely changed the character of this small Idaho town.

I am not going to dwell on this in this blog post, but to give an example, across the street from my house in Idaho, the 80-acre farm field was recently developed into 1/2-acre lots with new $500K houses. Nobody in this town can afford a $500K house, they are all for the Californians.

Because of what I just experienced in Idaho, I completely changed my plans to video my “Adventure Rides” through western North Dakota, because I do not want Californians and developers to get the idea that this would be the next place to try to ruin. I know that I can count on the local people here in western North Dakota to continue to be mean, nasty, hostile, unfriendly, and uncooperative to discourage anyone from moving here.

Instead of videoing my motorcycle rides, explaining and showing where I am, I might from time-to-time just show a few pictures, and not tell where they were taken. I am surprised at some of the things that I see, once I travel a few miles away from paved roads and highways.

On Memorial Day, I came across a few abandoned homes on my motorcycle ride, but one of these old farms had its own small lake, with what appeared to be White Sand Beaches. White Sand Beaches, in North Dakota? I stopped and looked at this, not only did this lake have white sand beaches, it had a few white sand bars in the middle. I pictured young women and housewives sunning themselves wearing Bikinis, children playing in the water, and a couple of Sunfish Sailboats meandering along:

I rode another mile or two, and just as I came over a hill, I saw what appeared to be almost a Golf-Course-like greenbelt strip. I stopped and took a photo, but when I rode past this greenbelt strip, it did not lead to a house, this strip was trees and grass only, that extended about 1/2 mile. This could be its own Golf Course, out in the middle of nowhere:

A few miles further, there was quite a long lake, with some old tree growth, which was very surprising to see in western North Dakota:

I will just throw in one last photo that shows an old house that is no longer being lived in. This is a fairly large house, probably 100 years old. You can’t see it in this photo, but on the back side of this house, there is a very large upstairs outside porch deck. This upstairs outside porch deck is about 20ft x 30ft, large enough for the entire family and some of their friends. You don’t often see this kind of frivolous recreational amenity in old North Dakota houses:

I like to stop and think about what it must have been like to sit out on the upstairs deck on warm Summer nights, far far from anywhere, with total darkness for miles that would enable you to see thousands of stars in the sky. Or what it must be like to have your own private forest and lake on your farm, with no neighbors for miles.

Even though this looks appealing, I need to give people who aren’t from here, the warning that it gets down to -50 degrees Fahrenheit in the Winter here, and during some months the wind gusts exceed 100 mph across this prairie grassland.

Whenever you see one of these abandoned farm houses, it’s not unusual for people to no longer live in these houses because the electrical, plumbing, heating, and water-well are far outdated, with no insulation whatsoever in these houses. But the acreage is still being farmed, so no, these houses can’t be bought cheap, these houses can’t be bought at all because the farmers won’t sell them.