Jamestown, ND

We've been exploring the area up here a lot. There aren't a lot of roads up here, so we're pretty limited to 4 basic directions, and then it's just how far we feel like driving. East is Minnesota: Walmart, Dilworth, a big skiing/outdoor area at Detroit Lakes, and eventually Minneapolis. North is Grand Forks with its Super Target, then eventually Canada. South is the zoo in Wahpeton and then into South Dakota. And west is Valley City, a beautiful town with absolutely nothing to do there; Jamestown; and then Bismarck, which we have yet to go to.

In late July we went to Jamestown. Its claim to fame (being generous here) centers around buffalo: the National Buffalo Museum, a couple white buffalo, and the World's Largest Buffalo.

All are located right next to a restored prairie town. Now, when you've seen one restored prairie town, you've seen them all. Seriously. A couple log cabins, the jail, a post office, and a church are standard, with a couple other buildings thrown in for good measure (this one had a dentist's office; there was definitely something going on between the dentist and his patient).
What made this one different? It had a Wild West Gunfight!
See that guy? He's the sheriff. But how can he be the good guy if he's wearing black? If only that was the worst thing about the show.
These are the bad guys. I could've ad-libbed a show better than them, and they've been doing this once a week for the last 10 years. Wow. It wasn't pretty.

Fortunately there was the World's Largest Buffalo as consolation. North Dakota has a lot of these things (the World's Largest Catfish is nearby in Wahpeton, ND, but we haven't been to see it yet). I guess it's an excuse to stop and stretch your legs while driving.
The white buffalo is actually pretty interesting though. Apparently there's a Lakota legend about it. Once when they were going through troubled times, a woman appeared to help them. After that, she told them she'd come back whenever there was trouble, and she turned into a white buffalo and walked away. Right now there are three known white buffalo living, something that's never happened before, which is a definite sign that we're living in the end times. Maybe Tim LaHaye can work that in to his next set of stupid apocalyptic books?
Personally, I liked the playground the best.

Although a bit hokey in its tourism attempts, central ND is really beautiful. There are rolling hills, scattered trees, and a wide, open sky. It's all farmland except for a few small towns, so you can go miles without seeing more than a handful of houses.
After the buffalo overload, we tried to find sunflower fields. ND is America's largest grower of sunflowers, and according to pictures we've seen, there are giant fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. Mommy loves sunflowers, so she was excited when someone at the gift shop told her where to look for them. Unfortunately, we didn't find any (although we later realized that they don't bloom until late August). But we did discover that there are so few roads in ND that the national atlas we were using had dirt roads listed on it!