The One That Got Away

As soon as we got to Grand Forks, we immediately began asking what there is to do outside Grand Forks. Everyone talked about the white buffalo in Jamestown, North Dakota. They have three of them now on a preserve with other bison. They are sacred in the Native American culture, and to have three of them is pretty amazing.

First we went to the museum,

where we saw:

a bison head

 the world's worst petting zoo

a picture of a mountain of bison skulls, used in the refining of sugar (yuck!)

another huge bison head that freaked me out so much, I made Josh take the picture while I hid in the other room. Wall-mounted heads are freaky.

a full-bodied bison

The museum also had an observation deck that overlooked the preserve where the buffalo, literally, roamed. We did catch a glimpse of one of the white buffalos, but we didn't realize what we were looking at until it was too late to take a picture. 

this is an artist's rendering of what we might have seen

We found out later that albino buffalos tend to prefer the shade because the bright sun can be too much for their unpigmented eyes. Unfortunately, we were there at 2pm on a very sunny Saturday, so   we only got that one glimpse of the white one, but we saw tons of brown buffalo:

We also lived it up in the gift shop:

We bought our own white buffalo:

this one will never get away

She made many guest appearances in our pictures:

Jamestown is also the home of the "World's Largest Buffalo":

26 feet tall, 46 feet long, and weighs in at 60 tons

This sculpture was commissioned in 1959 by a local businessmen and was completed by art students from Jamestown College. This led to Jamestown being known as "The Buffalo City."

family portrait

Josh is braver than I-- that particular part of the buffalo leaks water

our buffalo is bigger than your buffalo

relaxing after a long day of buffalo-watching

we even enjoyed their nod to the Haunted Mansion graveyard

If you are ever passing through ND, I definitely recommend stopping in Jamestown. It includes a replica wild west town and everything, except the museum, is free.

This was our last trip before Josh moved back to Oregon, but don't think that just because Josh isn't here I won't continue to have Adventures in North Dakota! 

We Accidentally Attended a Shriner Parade

Josh and I have to wait until basically right before sunset before we go running because it is crazy hot in The Forks during the day, but last week there was an unseasonably cool(ish) afternoon. I was excited because it meant we could run, eat at a reasonable time, and I could get to bed at 10pm.

We even had enough time to run over the bridge and run/jog/walk in Minnesota.

But when we got back to the DeMers bridge, which is where we cross back over from Minnesota to North Dakota, we came across this:

 

We had some indicators that a parade was in store for the town, but when we parked the car I rationalized that it takes us around an hourish to run/jog/walk and any imminent parade would be done by then. So we parked the car in the riverside parking lot, which has only one escape... on DeMers street where the parade was in full swing at the end of our run.

We had absolutely no choice but to wait until it ended. So we saw things like:

one of many only mostly racist old, white man bands

a Viking ship

lots of clowns

horses with bejeweled hooves

lots of white dudes on motorcycles, go-carts, 4-wheelers, etc. Josh said he suspects that's the biggest draw to being a Shriner

the "culturally-appropriate" steel drum band

and, the coup de grace, a bunch of old, white guys dressed... well... like this (the dragon spat out fire extinguisher foam from its nostrils. They aimed for me, but I was behind a bridge beam)

We had to wait for an hour, so our early start on our evening run was completely pointless because we got back to the apartment at the same time we normally do and I didn't get to bed until way after 10. But we got to see this Shriner parade, which seems to be the most Midwest thing we have done so far.

Internship Adventures: North Dakota

To complete my doctorate, I have to do an internship. To get an internship I had to apply for and then interview with various places. I had two phone interviews (which I won't talk about because I don't want to jinx anything) and three in-person interviews. I applied to only college counseling sites, but I looked at my internship year as a chance to live anywhere in the country. So I chose places where I probably wouldn't normally get a chance to live.

First stop: North Dakota!

We flew into Bismarck to attend the temple. Our luggage somehow disappeared between Portland and the Twin Cities, which caused stress (it was found again before we left for Grand Forks, but we didn't know this yet), but this did not stop us from seeing the sights of Bismarck, which includes:

The airport!

Dinosaur bones in the airport!

The biggest draw in Bismarck is the capitol, which is (by far) the tallest building. 

North Dakota is unique in that there are these guys:

And apparently elevator technology has not yet reached their hotels. (Thankfully their hotels aren't very tall, but my luggage was heavy!)

Here I am right before my interview:

Overhead lighting is not great, but take my word that I was looking very hirable that day

It only snowed for the last hour or so that we were in Grand Forks, but it was pretty cold. I loved the counseling center and I wouldn't mind it at all if I matched there.

After my interview we drove to Fargo to fly out the next day for Texas.

ShepAlder Temple #45: Bismarck, North Dakota

We traveled from one end of the country to the other in the past couple weeks in order for me to go to various internship interviews. One interview was at the University of North Dakota counseling center, and I convinced Josh that this was the perfect opportunity to visit one of the temples we never thought we'd see: Bismarck!

This temple was dedicated in 1999 and is a smaller temple, similar to Fresno, Medford, Palmyra, and Detroit. It's the 61st operating temple and is pretty plain, so I don't have much to say about the interior. However, the temple workers were beyond nice and we chatted with some of them for awhile. They wished me luck on my interview (which was the next day) and I think it helped that we started our trip with the temple.

It was extremely windy and our luggage was unaccounted for, but luckily we had planned ahead and brought appropriate clothing in our carry-ons. Josh had to change in the parking lot of the stake center because he was dealing with other stuff and forgot to change in the airport. 

We found the temple easily. There isn't much to Bismarck, though we were thankful it was a beautiful day since we were so worried about snow.

We flew into Bismarck specifically to attend the temple, so the fact that our luggage was lost was worrisome because we had to head to Grand Forks for my interview the next day and might not have been reunited with our luggage until Fargo or Texas. But as we were leaving, Josh listened to his voicemail and our luggage had reappeared at the Bismarck airport! So my fear that I would have to wear some cobbled together outfit rather than the one I had planned was allayed.