June 24, 2012 Deer Park RV Park – Buffalo, Wy

Boy did we get off early this morning! Skipping through two time zones in two days is confusing to us and to Dusty. He’s the one who stuck his nose in my face at 4:30 this morning. I managed to get him to lie down for another 30 minutes, but after that he wouldn’t relent so up I got. When we returned from our walk, Rob was already up and heading to a shower. We were on the road around 7 am, unheard of in our travels so far, but then our bodies think it was closer to 9. Our destination was Buffalo, Wy, at least a 7 hour drive (363 miles). Western North Dakota and eastern Wyoming is FLAT! But, did you know…the geographical center of the U.S. is in SD??? I wonder if Hawaii and Alaska figured in to that computation. We passed by the spot, but it was a ways off the main road. Not sure if you can even get to it. There is a monument to it, however, in Belle Fourche. We didn’t stop. Wikipedia says this is it since 1959, which includes Hawaii and Alaska. Before that it was in Lebanon, Kansas and still is for the contiguous US. That would probably be the most likely answer on Jeopardy.

An otherwise uneventful 7 hours of miles and miles of grassland, interspersed with some fields of yellow, we think might be mustard. Of course, we were birding at 62 mph along the way and observed lots of Lark Buntings, Meadowlarks, and Horned Larks, plus the ubiquitous Redwinged Blackbirds. Rob swears he saw a Yellow Headed Blackbird, but I can’t confirm it. A couple of Northern Harriers and, we think, a Rough Legged Hawk rounded out our birding attempts.

We rounded the bend into Buffalo and what did our wondering eyes behold???? The snowcapped Big Horn Mountains peeking through a haze. We’re in the mountains. Real mountains!! Throughout Michigan, and points west the highest peaks noted were shorter than 2000 feet. Why bother.

One other point of interest… We saw a sign indicating we were crossing the “Continental Divide, elevation 1490 ft.” in North Dakota??? Since when!!   A search of Google provides the answer. For those interested here’s the website or just google “continental divide”. http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/geology/a_continentalDiv.html   

It seems there’s more than one continental divide. The one in ND is the Northern Divide. Some of the rivers and streams of ND drain into the Mississippi river system and thus, the Gulf of Mexico and some drain north into the rivers draining into Hudson Bay.  There is historical significance in this in that it served as the boundary between the US and Great Britain (Canada) when the Louisiana Purchase was added to the US. There are still political implications with water rights being asserted by both the US and Canada. For more info, check the website.     

This shot actually has some slope to it and some trees.

Mustard? I guess it's grown somewhere. Maybe just a rotational crop.

Tomorrow we’re headed to Thermopolis where we’ll join Stan and Jerre.