Sunday, July 30, 2017, Bismarck, ND
Day 80

Well we are off, departing Fargo and beginning our drive across North Dakota. This is one of two states that my folks never made it to in their 30 years of motorhoming (Hawaii is the other which we visited in April of this year). My dad always loved to tell of the reason for not visiting North Dakota was the state tree, the telephone pole! The first hour of our drive was completely flat, much farmland and lots of telephone poles lining Interstate 94. Then the landscape became somewhat hilly, even mountainous to this Florida boy. After 90 minutes, we stopped in Jamestown to visit the Buffalo museum which was supposed to have an albino buffalo and a white buffalo among its herd. It is also home to Dakota Thunder, the world’s largest buffalo. It turned out the albino died in November and the herd was in a field down in a valley with trees no less that the herd hid among to escape the heat which was around 90 degrees on this sunny day. Although we saw no live buffalos, we did get our photos of Dakota Thunder, all 60 tons of him. I’ll bet he is even bigger than the world’s biggest ball of string! Onward to Bismarck, another 90 minutes along I-94. I must admit that so far the interstate in this State is the best road we have been on. We checked into the Hillcrest RV Park (FHU). We visited the North Dakota Heritage Center and viewed the dinosaur and fossil exhibit and a very good exhibit on the lives of the Native Americans. Grocery shopping at Ca$h Wise was one of the better stores we have found and we could not refuse a porterhouse steak at $7.98/lb. I grilled the steak in the shade of the coach and got to open our Canadian Niagara on the Lake Cabernet Sauvignon. Steak was rare and excellent. The Cab dry and nicely oaked. A great meal, and enough for tomorrow’s dinner as well.