We drove across North Dakota today. The state has an odd fascination with displaying ridiculously over-sized stuff—I always thought that was Texas’s thing.

On the road between Fargo and Dickinson (where we planned to stop), we encountered the world’s largest (man-made) buffalo in Jamestown. It was cute. About an hour later, we saw the world’s largest sandhill crane, in the town of Steele. Finally, we arrived at “Salem Sue”—the largest cow in the world. I’m not sure how many other “world’s largest constructed animals” there are in North Dakota, but three already seems excessive.

We also drove by the world’s largest display of scrap metal sculptures.

Besides all of the random “largest stuff” on display everywhere, we saw farmland—lots of it.

Miles and miles of corn fields: the default North Dakota scenery.

We arrived in Dickinson in the late afternoon and checked into the local Comfort Inn ($50/night via Hotwire). Since we still had some daylight, we took a short drive over to Theodore Roosevelt National Park to get a preview before our hike tomorrow.

The landscape changed pretty abruptly from flat farmland to hilly badlands as we approached the park. We spent a bit of time at an overlook watching wild horses run around in the distance.

The badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. They’re full of wildlife!

We only managed an hour or so at the park before it started to get dark, but we saw quite a few bison, wild horses, deer, and prairie dogs.

Looking forward to spending some more time hiking the park tomorrow!