Early Days in North Dakota

Jameston Largest Bison

Jamestown RV Escort Service

After dodging the hailstones in South Dakota and Nebraska, we are currently staying in a shady campground in Jamestown, North Dakota. Jamestown is a city with a population just under 15,000 people and is home to the world's largest buffalo (cement statue). The statue is located in Frontier Village, a historical village that is home to an albino bison (buffalo) which has special significance for American Indians. It was significant to me too, as it stood out from the other brown coloured bison - but it kept hiding in the herd down the end of the paddock, so no photo!

We are enjoying our site at this campground - one it is shady, and two, it gives us a bird eye view of other RV's coming into the campground. When you only stay overnight in a place you don't have time to sit outside, so having a 5 day stop here has given us a bit of time to watch the world go by. For dinner last night we cooked some baby back pork spare ribs on the bbq. Using Rainie's trick, we used a pastry brush in the last half of the cooking to spread a thick marinade over the ribs so that the marinade didn't burn on the grill. Delicious. While we were sitting outside gnawing on our ribs and sipping an aussie merlot, we saw several RV's pull up at the office to check in. Very busy indeed. What we find interesting is that so many campgrounds see the need to 'lead' each RV to the allocated site. This campground only has 48 sites, and they are clearly marked both on a marker and on the printed map they give you, so you don't need to be Einstein to work out where to go. However, a man in his little golf buggy leads the way, and pulls into your site ahead of you. He then points out where you plug into electricity, cable, sewer etc. Surely they could save on fuel and time by simply asking would you like help finding your site, and I have no doubt that 90% of RVers would say they'd be fine. But no, no choice, just follow me...

As you can imagine, we have stayed at numerous campgrounds over our 3 years of motorhoming around the US for 6 months a year, so we are pretty familiar with daily operations. This campground, like many private ones, is located beside a main highway and within cooee of a railway line. However, it is nice and shady, which is a real bonus on hot summer days. We prefer not to run our airconditioner - our preference has got nothing noble about it like saving power, but simply because we like the fresh air. We have been here for 4 days so far, and have not needed the airconditioner yet. Due to the providential location of our site, we havn't even needed to use our awning. By the time the sun is in any position to be uncomfortable, the RV next to us shades us from the western rays, and it in turn is shaded from the rig to it's west, and so on until the last rig which is shaded by a bank of trees. Perfect.

We are looking forward to our next campground further north where we will meet up with friends Avalyn & Wes. He is a taxidermist who is busy most of the winter mounting deer & antelope heads from the hunters, but this summer he has had an unusual amount of large fish to mount. Murray is hoping that he & Wes catch some nice fish in the coming weeks.