Along a lonely stretch of prairie road, a series of enormous scrap-metal sculptures rises from the fields, a whimsical labor of love that draws travelers off the interstate.

Astride the border with Canada in the wooded Turtle Mountains, the International Peace Garden blooms as a living monument to the long friendship of two neighboring nations.

The glacier-pocked wetlands of the eastern plains hatch a vast share of the continent's ducks, making North Dakota one of the most important waterfowl nurseries in North America.

When the October wind turns the grass to gold, hunters and their dogs fan out across the plains for the ring-necked pheasant, in a ritual as old as the harvest itself.

Each spring at first light, sharp-tailed grouse gather on ancestral dancing grounds to stamp, whirl and coo in one of the prairie's most extraordinary courtship rituals.

Pooled behind the Garrison Dam, vast Lake Sakakawea draws anglers from across the region to chase the walleye that have made it one of the great fisheries of the north.