Monday we moved from St.Paul to the Southwest corner of MN, Luverne, where Blue Mounds State Park is located. We are happy in our "relatively" small trailer, because a larger rig would preclude us camping in some of these tight parks.
In the western part of the state you begin to see the prairie. There are the farms with the corn and Soybeans from the central part, but interspersed between the fields there are great areas of grasslands with outcroppings of red quartzite protruding though. This park is known for a couple of hundred acres of prairie land and their herd of Bison. You can see this illustrated in the picture at the top.
The park has a herd of 100 Bison, and they will auction off as many as 40 this fall. We learned that the term Buffalo, while generally OK is not preferred. The big animals the hunters found in our West are more accurately known as Bison. What ever you call them these guys are big, and the prairie is HOT. We went looking for them Tuesday morning, and found them close to the fence.
I was actually able to climb up onto the walkway for the auction buyers, where I shot the photo of the big guys loafing, a term that means lying down and chewing their cud. They often roll in the dust, to rid themselves of flies and to cool off. After awhile they left this area, and began to wander down in front of an observation stand the park had built, so we could easily see over the fence. This beasts appear to be quite docile. The park warns us however that the fence wold mean nothing to hem if they wanted to get out, or get us! I can't imagine what it took for an indian to go after these guys with just a bow and arrow.
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