Sailing the High Seas of. . . North Dakota!

Yep, in July three friends and I sailed overnight on the massive reservoir of Lake Sakakawea, a body of water with 368,000 acres of surface area and more than 1,200 miles of shoreline. This is a reservoir almost as big as Lake Mead or Lake Powell, but it is little-known and very little visited.

Tight, long arms of the reservoir, which spread inland like tentacles off the body of the lake, let sailors float into the remote canyons that were flooded a half-century ago upon the completion of the Garrison Dam. These nautical badlands—scenic and unique to North Dakota—are strange Martian seascapes of tiered and multicolor hills, canyons, hoodoos, and ash.

Check out my story on sailing the “Nautical Badlands of Sakakawea” in today’s New York Times. . .

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