Bison Joke

I saw this on a card last week. I'm guessing it tickled my funny bone mostly because I lived in Western South Dakota for nearly a decade, and often saw large herds of bison (some incorrectly call the animal a buffalo).

There was a drawing of a bison standing on its hind legs, talking into a cell phone. The message read: "I love the convenience, but the roaming charges are killing me."

Oh, give me a home... (la-la-la-la-la-la!)

Lookin' Pretty in the Black Hills

When we lived in the Black Hills of South Dakota, we liked riding the forest roads -- dirt road, one-lane roads, don't-see-anyone roads. On one such trip -- a "we've got an hour to kill before a meeting; hey let's drive into the Hills" trip -- we got a flat tire. We're AAA members. No worries, right? Wrong. Outside of the towns, there are only three spots in the Black Hills which have cell phone coverage. We were not in one of the spots.

We guessed correctly where the spare "donut" tire was. The manual let us know the jack was in the glove compartment. My hubby lay on the rocky, dusty ground while I was to read the instructions to him. Only, I didn't have my glasses. I held the manual at arm's length, reading slowly, word by mistaken word. Time's ticking. My husband needed to be back in town for his meeting. He stood up, grabbed the book from my hands, and said, "Just stand there and look pretty."

So I did. I wonder, though: Is looking pretty in the woods when there's no one around, the same concept of "if a tree fell in the woods and there's no one around...?"

August Fairs

Fairs are fun. People have worked hard all year (or summer) to bring food, produce, animals, art, and entertainment together for this one week.

It was a bit of an adjustment for our family when we moved from Erie County in Western NY, with nearly a million people living in the county, to Western South Dakota, which, when combined with North Dakota, holds about the same number of residents as Erie County.

That first August, friends took our high school son to the 4-State Regional Fair in Rapid City. Prior to this, we'd attended the Erie County Fair near Buffalo, NY, but that was a county fair, not a 4-state regional fair. Our son was thinking eye-popping huge.

When he got to the end of the runway, he looked at his friends and said, "So where's the rest of it?" They turned, and pointed down the other side of the runway.

Yep, there's a difference from urban living and frontier living. I actually appreciate them both.

Where's the rest of the fair? Spread throughout a four-state region.

Mount Rushmore Tourist

We lived in the Black Hills, near Mount Rushmore, for a time. The top tourist blooper question for me came the summer there was flooding in North Dakota along the Red River.

A tourist called a ranger stationed at Mount Rushmore to say they were debating about visiting. They wanted to know if the Presidents' faces -- standing about a mile high in elevation -- was flooded, too.