Eastbound, the route enters from Montana just west of Beach and passes Dickinson, Bismarck, Jamestown, Valley City, and West Fargo before entering Fargo, where it exits the state at the Red River of the North and continues into Minnesota at Moorhead, then turns southeast to Minneapolis.

The route enters at Beach and passes through the badlands near Medora and the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

A public rest area about seven miles (11 km) east of Medora provides an awe-inspiring view, especially at sunset, and an opportunity to hike through some of the scenery on the Painted Canyon Trail.

Between Mandan and Bismarck, I-94 crosses the Missouri River with a view of the Northern Pacific (now BNSF) Railway Bridge to the south.

At Steele, it passes the world's largest sculpture of a sandhill crane, 40 feet (12 m) tall and named "Sandy", on the south side of I-94, just east of exit 200.

At Jamestown, it passes the world's largest sculpture of a buffalo (actually bison) named "Dakota Thunder", 28 feet (8.5 m) in height and on the north of the highway.

At approximately milemarker 275 on the westbound lanes between Jamestown and Valley City, the highway crosses the Laurentian Divide, at an elevation of 1,490 feet (450 m) above sea level.

[7] In January 2024, the North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDOT) announced that they had begun a study to replace the Great Marsh Bridge over the Missouri River in Bismarck.