Showing posts with label sights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sights. Show all posts

Monday, July 1, 2013

Bison Behavior

While in South Dakota and North Dakota we noticed that Bison like to make wallows.  They rub themselves on the ground exposing the dry earth which helps them in several ways.  It helps them to shed their winter coat, it coats them with dirt that keeps bugs away and it is also soothing for them as the ground is cool.  Bison also rub against trees a great deal to help them remove their shedding winter coat.  We went up  and explored the wallows and some trees that looked very damaged and here is what we found!


 We found wallows of various sizes with lots of hoof prints and even some Bison fluff laying in them
Be also found a lot of different sized hoof prints as well.

There were plenty of trees that were damaged from the Bison rubbing on them, some were even dead!
And here's the evidence, Bison fuzz!!
We noticed that the Badlands of North Dakota are quite different than the Badlands of South Dakota!  The South Dakota Badlands are quite desolate looking, and the hills (if that's what you want to call them) look like they should be on an alien planet!




















We visited part of Theodore Roosevelt Park in North Dakota where they have Wild Horses!


They were so beautiful and majestic looking and some had adorable little colts with them!  There are two other areas of the park that are not connected that I would love to go visit some day. 

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Some other sights to see

We went to a Petrified Forest in South Dakota but I have to admit that it looked more like a lot of tree trunks placed along a winding path for you to notice.  They weren't all placed there, there were actually some large fallen trees that were completely petrified and quite impressive!  It was a lovely day, sunny and very windy with a cool breeze and a beautiful forest path to walk through, it was quite nice really.  They also had a very nice rock shop with lots of beautiful specimens for sale.





























We also visited a place called Bear Country which is like a zoo but you drive your car through it to observe the wildlife.  There were tons of bears, at least 40 of them and I have to admit I've always been afraid of bears especially while camping (Bear-anoia)!  They didn't look as vicious as I expected though.  We saw lots of animals in the zoo.

 Above is an arctic fox

 Big horned sheep
 Mountain goats

 And of course the bears!  The dogs did not care for any of these animals and barked hysterically!  We realized that we can't take them camping say in the Boundary Waters in MN as they would likely make good bear food.  Tune in tomorrow for more pictures!