Buffalo Gal

Well, if you have nothing else to push, push the meat scatter. This is in Jamestown, North Dakota. And in these parts, with the bitter cold winter, North Dakotans will eat anything that moves. Oh, this was the restaurant in our RV park, a semi-sorry excuse for a park but that's life on the road. We chose to eat down the street at a restaurant next to a casino certain they would serve wine. The waitress said they had no alcohol and you can bring a bottle and two glasses back from the casino. Paul bought a bottle of Chianti to go (the waitress called it "Chee-an-tie", no kidding).Since when can you gorge on red meat, smoke cigarettes but can't get a drink? Well, not since Utah, anyway.This was the sign at our RV park on the side of the restaurant. How classy. Somebody hit the girl in the boobs with paintballs. Of course in Jamestown this passes for excitement.Our laun ro at at the RV park next to a dumpster. Life on the road. Nice.Adjacent to the RV park, the town's major claim to fame, the house where Louis L'Amour was born. Lou who?   We know. Do you?But Jamestown also has what's billed as the "world's largest buffalo". It was actually a metal sculpture which, of course, we missed as we flew out of town. But we did find a mate for that lonesome, horny bison at Teddy Roosevelt National Park. Our RV park had four buffalo. Imagine. Four here and only one there. So we shot through North Dakota like poop through a goose and found ourselves in Wadena, Minnesota. Thought "what a trashed up place this is". Couldn't the townspeople at least spiff up the road leading into town? We discovered later that what we saw was a small part of the damage from a tornado that hit Wadena in mid-June and killed three people in the area. God will get us for thinking otherwise. Of course we'll already burn in hell for having that park ranger pull the plug on the guy in the iron lung. We found a great little Minnesota state park called "Crow Wing" where the Crow Wing River meets the origins of the Mississippi, a river at this point you can easily throw a rock across. It was here that a couple of  tribes of Ein-Jines, the Sac-and-the-Wac or something like that, had a major battle. French "voyageurs" (fur trappers) took advantage of the confusion, moved in and built a small trading town in order to send their beaver pelts downriver and onto Europe. At one time, around the 1880s, the settlement of Crow Wing boasted some 330,000  people, a Costco, an Applebee's, and a Dell Computer call center staffed by who else but Indians.Today, this lone building remains. Ware did day go? Nobody know. Is mistery. Look it up.We think they all just walked this dock, loaded onto cruise ships, and sailed downriver. The Ein-Jines went to call centers in Bangalore. That's in India.Meantime, back at camp, unable to solve da mistery, Paul builds a campfire, puts hotdogs and some long, shiny thing on the grill.And Daisy sits waiting in eager anticipation hoping for one of them dogs. She got two, since it's all about Daisy.

Up next, batten down the hatches in Hinkley, Minnesota. The tornado sirens go off. Yee-haw.

ONE MORE TIME, GET YOUR BUTTS UP AND AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER. GET ON THE ROAD. IT'S A HOOT AND A HALF.