Beyond Fargo

Day 10 of the Great Adventure

It took us awhile to get out of the hotel. We actually did get up at a reasonable hour, but organizing the van and took much longer than we assumed.

Oh, I forgot a very important thing from yesterday – Animal acquired a herd/pod/flock (?) of baby quail. Seven Buttons and four others that are larger but she can’t remember what type. They were given to her at the end of the Fair, since, apparently, there were masses of them available for sale during the Fair. They were actually hatching the damn things the whole time. These were leftovers, and as I said, they were given to her. It probably helped that she was dressed in her fairy costume when she expressed interest. (No one wants to disappoint a fairy.)

The Buttons are miniscule and oh, so fragile looking. Sadly we lost one before we even got going, so now there are 10.

We were further delayed because we had to stop and get a larger container (they spent the night in a USPS priority mail box), and some food for them. That done we finally got on the road heading for the <bison/buffalo museum/ home of a white bison named Miracle.

That was a quick trip – we came, we saw, we jumped in the van and headed for the next stop. (We did get a bunch of pics. Will post them sooner or later.)

Next stop was the Badlands and Teddy Roosevelt National Park. The place we went is off the beaten track. So far off that we were the only tourists there. We did meet two park ranger who requested that if we ran into someone named Dan to call them asap. Apparently Dan has been missing for at least a day.

We did a 3 mile hike into the area heading for the remains of a forest that was petrified in the long, long ago. There were some incredibly amazing terrain that we trekked through to get there. Part of the track is on private land, and there was evidence that fracking was taking place. (Sad.)

Lots of pictures were taken of the petrified stuff, rock formations and other geologic oddities. As we started back there was a plane quartering the area, obviously looking for Dan. Hope they find him. We did do our part by calling out at intervals for him to make some noise. The only thing we rousted was some kind of ruminant, perhaps a pronghorn, but probably just a deer with weird horns.

On the way out I did spot a buck with a reasonable rack and a doe.

Lots of pictures of sunsets taken.

Next goal was figuring out where we were going to stay. We checked a couple of motels and felt their prices were too exorbitant, so we found our way into the park and are camping out. I’m in the van, Animal is sleeping out under the trees and the stars. It is simply stunning out here. The sky is clear overhead, though cloudy on the edges (A. is bummed. She was still hoping to catch an Aurora of some kind, but it’s doubtful.) The campground has no showers so we had to wipe down as best we can in the ladies latrine (thank you SuZ for the soap thingies :-).

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print tonight. I’ll post when we get an internet connection.