Just a few updates today, as I’m wiped.

That’s one big bison behind us!

Yesterday morning Ms. Betty Page woke us up at 6am. She slept all night on her own, so we weren’t too unhappy with her morning wake up whines.

We’d spent Saturday night in Jamestown, North Dakota. Since it wasn’t quite light out yet, we piled in the jeep, filled up the tank, and found an open Caribou Coffee as we waited for the sunrise, because we wanted to see a special bison.

One of Jamestown’s claims to fame is its giant bison Sculpture, standing 26′ tall and 46 feet long. We decided that before we left town, we’d drive on over to the bison to get a ‘family’ photo. We figured we’d have the bison to ourselves, as who would be crazy enough to get up at day break on a 30 degree Sunday morning to look at a giant fake bison (besides us)?

It turned out, there was a whole frontier town that lined the street leading up to the bison! The cold, quiet morning and some low lying clouds gave the old, empty frontier town an eerie feeling. It was cool.

Here are a few pics.

Just before the Frontier town gates, there was a two story viewing platform (on the left) and a large Prairie Schooner shaped chuckwagon to its right. Both overlook a herd of bison (we couldn’t tell if the bison were there at this time or not).

After driving through a set of gates (which we were surprised to see open), we encountered an old train depot, a few other buildings, then this general store and church.

Just beyond the church was a museum, though it was closed (we didn’t have time for it anyway). After the general store and church was a series of buildings that we had to drive through to get to the bison (the bison is behind me in the below pic).

Here’s another angle with the jeep in the photo:

Looking the other way, you can just see the bison beyond the trees. We parked where the road dead ends just a short distance away.

After a slow walk over ice, we made it to the bison.

After our one ‘touristy’ stop on the trip, we were back on the road. Through fog, ice build up on the front of the jeep, and some snow–a sharp contrast to the 71 degree, sunny weather we enjoyed two days earlier–we eventually made our way to Bozeman, where we spent the night. Today, we expect to make it home.