TEXAS PANHANDLE: BUFFALO LAKE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, THE PANHANDLE PLAINS HISTORICAL MUSEUM, PANHANDLE QUIRKS

 March 20, 2021

Our first stop of the day was a trip to Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge, 7,664 acres of protected prairies, marshes, and woodlands. 

Roadside sign on our way to the refuge

Once inside the park, we drove on a dirt road (Bob's favorite kind of road) that made a giant loop. The unimpressive scenery mostly looked like this:

We saw all of these signs, but didn't have the opportunity to avoid treading on any of these critters:

After this not-too-exciting foray into what didn't seem to be much of a refuge (at least in my opinion--Bob may feel otherwise), we headed to the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum. Built in 1933, it is part of the West Texas A&M University campus in the town of Canyon.

NORTH DAKOTA, BISMARCK: STATE CAPITOL BUILDING

September 13, 2019

One of the things we like to do as we have traveled around to the 50 states is visit the state capitol buildings. There are a lot of states we will have to go back to because we didn't go to the capital city or because it was Sunday and the capitol was closed or because of some other reason.  

But we made it to the capitol in Bismarck, North Dakota's capital.  It was not super exciting, but it had some fun components. 

First, some info on Bismarck itself. It was founded in 1872 by European Americans on the Missouri River and was made the capital in 1889, the year the state was created from the Dakota Territory and admitted to the union as the 39th state. (FYI, it made it in ahead of South Dakota, the 40th state.)  Bismarck has a population of about 75,000 people, not very big, but by no means the smallest capital city.

The original state capitol was built in 1883-1884 to house the territorial government, but it burned to the ground in 1930, requiring that a new building be built during the height of the Great Depression. They came up with this 21-story Art Deco structure, still the tallest building in North Dakota. Its nickname is "The Skyscraper on the Prairie."

They have a very nice state seal, which is in the front entry.