Other than the National Park, this is what North Dakota is about.  Beautiful fields of yellow, blue and green …….. and oil derricks.  These two pictures were taken without moving, except looking another direction.

So, wildlife, first we saw one buffalo, from a distance. Quite exciting actually. Then we took a hike, only a mile off the road, to see a prairie dog town just off a trail. Well, there were all sorts of them, maybe 50 or more.  Then Trish spotted the buffalo.  Just a hundred yards away was a herd! Quite exciting, just listening to them and watching them. Lots of loud snorting sounds and a few rolling in the dusty dirt. We watched for a few minutes, much to the displeasure of the prairie dogs whose village we were standing in, until one big buffalo started moving in our direction. Seeing a large male buffalo, over 2000 pounds, capable of 30 MPH running, moving toward you, inspires you to go back the other way, which we did.

Anyway, very fun day seeing all of that wildlife.

Today we spent the day at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We went to the "north unit", which is less popular than the south, but also far less crowded!  In three hours there we probably saw 20 other cars.

Quite good scenery, the wind kept the temps ok, but still hot.  Anyway, according to the reviews, the north unit has a lot less wildlife, but equally good scenery. Well the scenery was very nice, as you can see, I wore a nice hat ...just kidding.  The scenery was great, and we saw wildlife, …. lots of wildlife. Pictures will be in our next post!

Thunderstorms last night, they seem bigger and more intense than back home.

Update: I guess we dodged a bullet that night. Our park ranger said that we had 70 mph winds during that storm. But only a few miles away the same storm had 127 mph winds and a tornado hit an RV park, killing a baby and flipping something like 27 RV's. Very sad.

View from tonight's camping spot. We are in Lewis and Clark State Park in North Dakota. Nice drive today, lots of yellow canola fields that I showed yesterday, but also the other "non-green" field, now identified as flax plants. Those are a kind of blue, so from a distance they look like water.
Then when most of the fields end, suddenly it is more hilly, drier, and prarie like. Oil dereck's and cattle.
Flames burning off the gases, one on the hill beyond our camp site.

Tonight we are in the town of Minot, North Dakota. Nice area, and for some reason we found a statue of Sondre Norheim, who is the founder of modern skiing.

Driving across North Dakota today was beautiful. Miles and miles of fields of yellow. Apparently the yellow flowers are canola, a common crop up here. Also plenty to corn, hay and other assorted plants.