North Dakota, Part III

As I mentioned, my route through the state was plotted to visit as many of the National Wildlife Reserves as possible.  There are 63, some of which are simply fields of ground cover or sloughs.   I think I probably hit about 7 of the major areas this trip. 

Here's a White-tailed Deer fawn taken at Arrowwood NWR, near Jamestown

A Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus) with whom I shared a granola bar and a bag of trail mix, at a regional park campground outside of Jamestown.  It and I were the only ones there. 

A 'prairie pothole' near Cayuga; the Tewaukon NWR is just down the road

A young Red-tailed Hawk with very shiny black legs and feet.  

But, it wasn't all birding and tromping around wildlife areas.  Occasionally I stopped into towns - especially ones I remember hearing on the US radio and television stations while I was growing up.  Local stations, with their locally-made advertisements.  The only one I didn't get to was Beluha, make that Beulah (I guess spell checker doesn't know all the names of little towns and neither do I) as there was road-resurfacing from every possible direction.

I stopped into a small place called Hankinson.  I needed groceries.  This is the building across the street from the food mart.

I love small towns 

I also stopped at Rugby, which is not exactly the geographic center of the continent.  I looked up the town on-line last night.  Apparently, they are no longer flying the Mexican flag.  Is that due to current anti-Mexican sentiment, or a sudden realization that the real center of the continent, which does include Mexico and Central America is likely somewhere in South Dakota or whatever state is south of that, I don't know.  Here's what the monument looked like when I visited. 

I liked the three flags flying.

End of Trip - or at least end of my trip photos