I lived in Grand Forks. We saw the northern lights occasionally. When I was in Alaska, that was a treat.
We were driving along Hwy 83 north and between those small towns that dot the hiway so at first I was wondering what ‘big event’ necessitated bringing out spotlights in the middle of nowhere.
This all happened sometime in the early Summer of 1985 when my brother lived in Bismarck.
Around Sept 1991 we took a second road trip there. Visited Mt Rushmore, too. No sign of the northern lights on that trip but we did get a light coating of snow.
If my brother still lived up there I’d have an excuse to go back again. I enjoyed the area but he let us know about the gruesome winters in Bismarck.