Buffalo Sunrise

Well, technically, it's a bison. The animal we silly Americans have always called a buffalo is not, scientifically speaking, an actual buffalo. Related, but no cigar. Still, "buffalo" sounds better in the title.

We're lucky we still have any around to call the wrong thing. There used to be oceans of these roaming the plains in vast herds - right up until we slaughtered nearly all of them in the 19th century, and for no good reason. The few that survive in the wild are now mainly isolated in a few national parks.

Such as this one: Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I wasn't sure what to expect from it. I kind of figured it would be mostly grasslands like the rest of North Dakota, but instead it was very much like Badlands in South Dakota (this area is actually called the Badlands of North Dakota, apparently, so there you go). It's a very rugged, interesting landscape, all hills and canyons and strange formations carved by erosion (and Bison). Very cool.

After that, I headed for Montana, a vast, mostly empty state with mostly nonexistent cell service, at least where I was driving. It took me an hour sometimes to drive from one tiny town to the next, with no guarantee that either one would even have a gas station. Not much traffic, though - I guess that's a plus.

After four days of driving, I'm now staying the night only a couple of hours from my ultimate destination - Glacier National Park. I'll be there tomorrow.