Fisherman's Dream: Enchanted Highway

Regent, North Dakota

According to Gary Greff, Fisherman's Dream is the most popular of the giant Enchanted Highway sculptures. A half-dozen colorful giant fish cavort in imagined water while a tiny life-size angler sits on a boat suspended on a pond surface 70 feet in the air.

Visitors wander the immersive lake bottom among towering sculptures, pose on a Gilligan's Island-esque shipwreck, and marvel at the fish-out-of-water effect of the art surrounded by vast farm fields.

The "Dream," completed in 2002, has at times seemed more like a nightmare. Gary stored the just-completed metal fish, unpainted, in a barn. Spring rains leaked through the roof, and all of the fish were rusted. Then after Gary had made all-new fish and was finally ready to weld together the sculpture next to the highway, he started a grass fire. It was dubbed the World's Largest Fish Fry.

Fisherman's Dream is also the Enchanted Highway sculpture that requires the most maintenance. According to Gary, "I thought the seaweed would look so nice waving back and forth in the wind. Well, metal only bends so many times before it breaks. So every one of my seaweeds I've gotta weld solid, so it don't move."