HAP Journey #8

We thought this was it.  The end of the line.  Two more to check off our list - one at Bonanzaville and one at NDSU.  Done and done.  Or so we thought.

First of all, after a second attempt at Bonanzaville (first one was before they opened, oops), the gal at the museum said the only buffalo they had was a stuffed one... weird.  Pinterest said this should be there:
































We did make it to NDSU for this bugger:

 It was cool because there was wind energy depicted on one side and fire on the other.

THEN!  Then, we got a crazy tip!  Our cousins were driving by an art museum (the same art museum that is home to the Gogh buffalo - yeah, the one that we had just visited!) and realized that the baby buffalo was at the back of the museum!!  The kids had been WAITING to find the baby, so we had to add it to our list. 

We found the baby!!

Speaking of tips... we have since gotten tips of TWO other buffalo!  Soon.  Soon we will be able to complete this adventure!

HAP Journey #7

We tried really hard to complete our buffalo hunt before school started.  About a week before, we practiced getting up and out of bed.  So where could we go after we did get out of bed??  How about a massive hunt?!  We even met up with our cousins for a fun geocaching adventure.  Then the genders split up - girls to head downtown for some yummy Teaberry drinks and boys to a new donut shop!  What could be better?  Well, how about throw in a few downtown buffalo and you've got yourself a date!

Despite a little road construction, we located this interesting fellow - thankfully on the outside of a business since we were there pretty early!

We've passed this guy (Nights in the Valley) lots of times downtown but never actually took our pic with him.  He is definitely worse for the wear... paint chipping and such, but a pretty fellow nonetheless.

We went on a fun adventure walk to find this guy, Diversity.

Check out the texture on this dude.

This is another buffalo we've seen a hundred times, or more.  He is one that started our adventure--knowing there must be several more "out there." 

It took me awhile to figure out the name "Tag You're It."  Duh.  Tagging... graffiti.  When we located the business this buffalo is located in, we stopped in at the front desk and told them our spiel of locating the painted buffalo.  The sweet, young receptionist started to give us directions to the one on Main St. (see above).  See - everyone has seen that one!  It cracked us up - how did she think we ended up at this business looking for a buffalo on Main?!  But, thankfully a coworker pointed us to a different entrance and viola, we found him!

HAP Journey #6

This journey started when we were chatting with an office worker.  She got excited about our adventure and told us she knew where a buffalo was, but didn't want to ruin our adventure.  I assured her that we were open to ALL leads on these guys!  So the first buffalo here is a "bonus" buffalo, not 

from our original list!  He was kind of stuck back in a corner, but was a great find nonetheless!

 

The kids have started to wane a little in their enthusiasm for taking pics WITH the buffalo.  :)

Next up was a buffalo I was excited to find.  It's name, Gogh-Bison-Go! was intriguing, especially since it is located outside of an art museum.  This guy was very interesting.  All sides had a different look - and the head of the buffalo was made to look JUST like Van Gogh --- complete with a bandaged bloody ear and everything... which made for quite the conversation with my kiddos...

Just down the street we found this buffalo in another mall.  A mall I don't particularly prefer to visit again.  This poor guy was looking quite worse for the wear.  I bet he was beautiful with all his tiling, but now several of the tiles were off.  M made sure to check his ears.  :)  C is interested in checking the buffaloes' stamps on their left hind legs.  All (but one that we've seen) have a raised buffalo head on their rumps.

 

HAP Journey #5

Glowing from our "win" the previous day, we set off on another buffalo hunt.  We went to another familiar buffalo - one we have already seen, just not taken a picture with.  This one was tough to get the kids on board with because they really, really, really just wanted to visit the home of this buffalo.  That's right.  This buffalo is at our local zoo!  :)  Do you see why it's a favorite of the kids'?  His name is even Tigalo. 

Next I realized that another buffalo was on our way to the errand we needed to run for the day.  Yay!  This fellow was located in the Blue Cross Blue Shield building.  We walked in and an irate older gentleman was all out arguing with the receptionist.  It was quite a scene and really I felt bad for both parties because clearly the old guy was feeling frustrated and the receptionist was clearly the messenger.  We sort of walked around the scene whistling as we skeedadled over to"Home on the Range."  Never a dull moment with our buffalo searches! 

 

HAP Journey #4

After an especially fun park play we decided to do a mini "buffalo hunt."  We stopped at Pracs where I thought there might be two buffalo.  We kept our eyes out for an outside display, but seeing none, we parked and headed into the building.  When we got to the door, we realized we had hit the mother lode.  Not one, not two, but FOUR buffalo were in the lobby.  There was only one small problem.  All the doors were locked.  :(  A guy coming in from a break let us in after we told him our reason for being there.  He seemed to get excited right along with us - and shared that he knew a guy who had one in his backyard! Well, it seems like we probably won't be finding every last buffalo if people have them in their yards and pastures, but we will certainly do our best!  Here are the four beauties along with their name plaques: 

The lobby!

I texted JJ saying we had a successful hunt.  The kids have gotten so into this project; it is fun get caught their enthusiasm with it.  Since we had such success with our Pracs stop, we decided to check out the buffalo at Microsoft.  We actually tried to find this bugger one other time with cousin A.  On the list I was given, this guy was listed with a wrong address - it said it was at Microsoft, but the address given was to a person's house.  Now that we knew we just had to search for Microsoft, we drove right up to "Mashkode-Pijiki."  He is interesting because he has no paint on him, just a bunch of holes.  Plus wiring... and he's attached to a solar panel.  Does he light up?  Does he power something?  We don't know, but he's an interesting addition to the buffalo collection!
 

HAP Journey #3

 We drive by this little lady often.  In fact, she was the inspiration for getting this whole adventure started because M got all excited about the "Angel" buffalo she saw on our drives here and there.  Upon closer inspection, M is even MORE excited about her because she has jewels all over her - it looks like she has lost several, but she still has several around her face and hooves.  Her name?  Ms. B... Flying Diva (of course!).  We were able to stop and see her as a family on our way home from Church last Sunday.

On an errand outing later that day, we stopped by the Convention & Visitors Bureau - a place we have already been so that we could get a picture with THE woodchipper - to get a picture with Aunie.  M & C loved this colorful buffie and it was neat to check out the Celebrity Walk of Fame - apparently real actual famous people have visited our humble state.  (and just a side note: check out that belly!  TWO more months people.  two more months...)

HAP Journey #2

Buffalo Path- the Gathering can be found right in the mall!  Also of interest with this particular guy is a picture of 40 of the buffalo together in one display.  40!  16 is apparently just the tip of the iceberg!  We were excited to have Daddy join us on this particular journey.  Yay for days off!  :)

I don't want to spoil it by posting a picture of all of them together... maybe that will be one of our last pics.  I did decide the culmination of this big project for our family will be a visit to the LARGEST buffalo in Jamestown and possibly a glimpse of White Cloud.   

HAP Journey #1

 

On Friday, August 1st, we set out on our journey.  We loaded up the van with two of our cousins, L & A and hit the dusty trail in search of our first bison.  Hmmm... Don's Carwash... We drove up to it, expecting to see the bison right away.  No bison in sight.  I got in a car line and a worker approached me wondering which type of carwash I wanted.  I explained our adventure and he said the buffalo was INSIDE the carwash!  But, we could view it at the end of the line.  We parked and headed inside.  Sure enough, there was our first find!  This poor guy was not really kept up - there was trash by his hooves and, as you can maybe tell by the picture, the place was L-O-U-D.  But, nevertheless, we spotted "A Path Through the Prairie".

 Next up, was a fellow named "Kaleidoscope" not too far from Don's Carwash at Cable One.  There were two Cable One offices across the street from each other, so we picked one and hopped out.  There was a line of people, but no buffalo to be seen.  I figured we had chosen the wrong office building, so we jumped back in the van and drove around the building, also hoping to see if it was an outside display.  Nope.  I checked our official guide with the address, and we were in the right place.  Hmmm.  We went back in the building and made our way to the front of the line.  The gal said they no longer had the buffalo.  Bummer.  What does a company do with a large buffalo they no longer want to display?  Too bad, too, because Kaleidoscope looked like a beauty.

#3 (or 2) was in a University of Mary building and as we pulled up L exclaimed that there dentist is in the same building and she HAD in fact SEEN the buffalo in question.  We knew we were on the right track!  We unbuckled and jumped out to find Mr. Dakota Dream, right as we walked in the building.  M declared it was her favorite because of his golden head.  C was just glad it was in a much quieter location! 

Herd About the Prairie

As the kids and I have been exploring our new city, we have been noticing some rather large and interesting canvases.  There are painted bison scattered throughout the city.  As my kids got more and more excited about them, I decided we had to do it.  We had to find them all.  And catalog our journey along the way.  First of all I had to do a little research.  What were the bison all about?  What's the background story and how can we find them all?  I thought for sure there would be a cataloging of all of them.  My SIL advised me to start at the Visitor's Bureau.  I gave them a call and they said that unfortunately they had an incomplete list, but the gal could email me what they had.  It was our start.  Another friend clued me in on a pinterest page dedicated to the herd.  I cross referenced both lists and found that there weren't any new on the pinterest page than what I had from the Visitor's Bureau.  Bummer.  But I jumped into mapquesting the sweet 16 I did have available.  I thought it'd be really fun to do a wham bam big adventure and find them all in one day.  However, just the drive time alone (not including buckling and unbuckling from carseats!) was over 1 1/2 hours.  Not gunna happen.  It was thus concluded that we'd find a few here and there whenever we had time, and whenever we were in a certain area.  That also made it more fun because different friends and family members could join us on our journey. 

A google search gave me a little bit of background information.
*Prairie Public Broadcasting made a documentary on the creation of these guys, called "Herd About the Prairie, A Virtual Art Stampede"
*Area Voices also posted a story from a local blogger about the bison and gave me a good bit of history, like:
     *The Arts Partnership commissioned 75 artists to participate in this (giving them a little money and 90 days to complete the project)
     *The bison debuted in 2006, at the Marathon - they were features along the route.  Then in the fall, they were moved to the Dome, where peopled lined up to see them all together.
     *The bison were then auctioned off and scattered about the prairie - from inside malls to someone's pasture, they are literally everywhere! 

The fun begins!