ST. ANTHONY- Garden gnomes, petrified wood and Tupperware are up for grabs along a 100-mile stretch of Highway 21 this weekend.

On Friday, sellers from St. Anthony to New England put out closet and basement curiosities for the eighth annual Highway 21 Treasure Hunt.

Scavengers can still browse at garages, sheds and lawns from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. today.

Roadside signs point out sales, and complete maps are available at gas stations, stores and cafes along the highway.

Sellers in St. Anthony and Flasher said shoppers itching for bargains arrived around 7:30 a.m. Friday.

Price stickers for cents or a few dollars marked clothes, dusty dishes and vintage luggage sets.

Norbert and Cally Fisher in St. Anthony said by mid-day about 60 people browsed 50 years' worth of household items crammed onto one lawn.

"We've got three big tables full, the trailer's full, what are we going to do?" Norbert Fisher said.

The Fishers are helping Cally's mother, Grace Davenport, empty the house she and her late husband shared.

Clayton and Coriene Maier of Lake Havasu, Ariz., spend summers in Mandan and drove to the sale for some "snooping."

Coriene Maier flipped over vintage juice glasses, impressed by the individual numbers on the bottom. She bought a box full for 5 cents per glass.

Bismarck Pioneer Elementary School third-grader Margaret Bjelanovic pulled two baskets, a dog statue and a bell from the Fishers' boxes and paid with change from her own pocket.

Neighborhood children ran by the Clyde and Gayla Hinle garage down the road in Flasher to purchase a stuffed sheep they'd been eyeing all day.

Clyde Hinle estimated he'd seen 100 shoppers pass through by mid-afternoon. He declared it the best day they'd had in the past two or three years of the rummage sale.

"I think people are out looking for stuff because of the economy," Clyde Hinle said. Children's clothes and winter wear seemed to be hotter-than-usual items on Friday, he said.

Apart from practical items and homemade kuchen, the shoppers in the Hinles' driveway looked at antique farm tools and fossils.

John Toman picks up petrified wood and bubbly brown rocks from his fields north of Flasher. Friday marked his eighth year selling them to rummage sale customers at the Hinle house.

Toman said he isn't sure what the brown rocks are, either lava or dinosaur droppings, he thinks.

"They're unique for some,"he said, "but for me they're just eyesores."

Linda Zeman of Mandan and Duane Schaeffer of Bismarck are making a weekend of the sales, just to look. They planned to stay overnight halfway down the route Friday and continue browsing today.

"You see a lot of things you've never seen before," Gayla Hinle said.

(Reach reporter Rachel Albin at 250-8253 or rachel.albin@;bismarcktribune.com.)