North Dakota

The front wheel bearings on the truck were replaced Tuesday morning and we headed out of Fargo that afternoon. There were quite a few hours of driving along the flat prairies. As we came up to Dickinson North Dakota there were scads of grasshopper oil rigs along the highway and new hotels advertising "$600/week" prices, presumably for the temp workers taking advantage of the oil boom.

Just beyond that, after the hours of flat, we came upon this:

The gorgeous badlands of Medora ND

It appeared like magic! We pulled over to the look out point and took a bunch of photos. As we were leaving, this fellow had appeared at the side of the parking area:

I was beyond excited!! I madly took photos (he was right beside the road) until the bison, after looking a bit shocked and quite put out by my tackiness, trotted away. It's amazing how huge bison are!

We also saw this at a different rest stop:

A funny attempt to please the rest stop dogs :) 

We did an afternoon of riding on the Maah Daah Hey Trail. The section we rode was beautiful grasslands--although I didn't fair too well with the cloudless skies' sun with no shade anywhere. Thankfully there was an ever-present wind to cool us off. We saw prairie dogs and an unexpected antelope.

This was our campground for the night--the Sully Creek campground.

As the sun set we watched bats flying above us and heard rustlings in the bushes that turned out to be large frogs. There certainly were lots of bugs around for them to eat.

We're actually in Montana right now, but I don't have enough internet time to blog about that just now. So for now I'll just say that it is paradise!