About
Welcome to Exploring North Dakota!
My name is Niki and North Dakota is my beautiful adopted home state.
It took me a long time to really love it here. Like, I’m talking over a decade long time. But now that I do, I cannot see myself living anywhere else.
I first moved to North Dakota in the summer of 2007 about five days before school started at the end of August. I was just going into 8th grade and I hated it here more than anything. Like so many other angry teenagers I was counting down the days until I could leave for college.
Then I didn’t leave.
I ended up an hour and a half down the road in Fargo at North Dakota State University pursuing a degree in Geology. Math crushed my dreams of becoming a scientist more times than I can count in my early adult years. So I switched majors for the fourth time and earned a Bachelor of Arts in History with minors in Geology and Art.
After college, I definitely planned on leaving. But that didn’t happen either. I ended up moving back to Jamestown where I got a job.
How the “Pandemic” Opened My Eyes
Take the heading how you will. Those six words have multiple meanings.
But for the purposes of this, the “pandemic” kept me from traveling far and wide (mostly because I didn’t want to deal with the added hassle of all the new “rules”) and really forced me to think about where I wanted to be in the world.
It was only after I got my expensive piece of paper in the mail that I realized college is a joke.
In fact, I hated it for about 12 years before I finally decided, it might not be so bad. Falling in love with this legendary state is the one good thing to come out of the “pandemic” for me.
Why Blogging?
Fun Facts About Me
- I have been to 46 out of 50 states (New Mexico, Arkansas, Rhode Island, and Deleware are left)
- I have danced in a fountain in Spain
- I have a Newfoundland dog named Olaf
- I love to garden
- Photography is a passion of mine
- I’m just starting to think fish don’t taste fishy