Mandan, North Dakota

Good morning, my friends! Once again you thought you might get a short break from my idle chatter, but here we go. Not only that, but we've entered the state of North Dakota. It's legendary!

Also, we're now on Central time, so you might want to check your watch and reset your clocks.

It was a drive of just over 300 miles yesterday, and we saw a lot of stuff. Right away, we saw these actual cowboys herding some cows into a tight bunch.
 

This is a vast expanse of farm land. We saw lots of grain elevators.

Plenty of barns and abandoned structures.

What we mostly saw was wide open spaces.

We might have had a shorter drive yesterday, but I was intent on driving the 30-mile Enchanted Highway.

It can be seen on the road between Regent and Gladstone in the southwest corner of North Dakota. Here, you can see it's even marked on the map.

By driving north from Regent, we were going in the wrong direction. A few of the sculptures were turned facing the other way.

This was the first one we saw. I tried to get it out the back window, but this was my best shot of this farmer with his wife and child.

Over the next hill was this cowboy on a horse.

This family of pheasants was so large, I couldn't capture it in a single frame.

Here we have a jumping fish catching a dragonfly.

Now there's a grasshopper to contend with. It was enormous.

Here are a couple of deer jumping a fence.

And finally...the flying geese.

We saw plenty of harvesters.

And who knew they grew so many sunflowers in North Dakota?!? We saw field after field after field of blooming sunflowers on both sides of the road. Dozens...maybe hundreds...of square miles of land planted in sunflowers.

The news about Smitty is good, but we grew more worried about him yesterday morning. He seemed kind of "spacy" and his nose seemed warm and dry. We decided it was time to have a vet take a look at him. Our final destination happened to be just outside of the North Dakota state capital of Bismarck, and so it seemed as if it would be our best option to find a vet within driving distance. I called four different vets before I could find one that could see him on such short notice. We ended up at Johnson Veterinary clinic with Dr. Kirk Johnson in Mandan, North Dakota. 

What a kind and dedicated man! I gave him a five star review on Yelp. He examined Smitty and told us he had no fever and that his lungs were clear. (We were worried he was developing pneumonia.) As it turns out, it's his same diagnosis from several months back of Feline Herpes Virus (FHV). He prescribed some antibiotics and an antiviral medication. It probably won't help for what ails Smitty right now, but it will prevent a secondary infection.

We were only about 10 miles from our final destination of Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. It's the place where General George Custer and his troops left to head for the battle at the Little Big Horn.

The park is situated at the confluence of the Heart River and the Missouri River. On our side of the river, we are in Mandan.

On the far side of the river is Bismarck, North Dakota, and the state capital. From where we were standing, we could see the State Capitol building.

It's a very  nice campground here. This is the view from where we sat outside our RV.

We'll spend today exploring the park, and we have a plan to walk the trail mentioned in the image below.

We're here just one more night, and then we'll move on to another of North Dakota's state parks tomorrow. I'll be back tomorrow morning to tell you more about this park.