World’s Largest Buffalo in Jamestown, North Dakota
Continuing our journey north to the Canadian border we headed from Brookings, South Dakota up to Minot, North Dakota stopping in Jamestown on the way. It was the perfect road trip stop with just enough quirkiness in the form of the World’s Largest Buffalo to entertain everyone while they stretched their legs.
Leaving Brookings the road quickly leads to miles and miles of straight flat land surrounded by corn and wheat fields. It’s super easy driving with 80 mph speed limit most of the way.
Keep in mind super easy driving on long straight roads through corn and wheat fields means there isn’t a lot of opportunities to stop for coffee and I really wish we had loaded up before departing. It probably would have been worse with more coffee though because there aren’t any rest stops either.
Eventually we made it to Jamestown– home of the World’s Largest Buffalo Statue. Because of the pandemic and our urgent need of restrooms we did a very simple and efficient meal of take away from Applebees, but there seemed to be a lot of really cute places to eat in Jamestown so I would probably have preferred one of those. There were also some super scary looking places to eat. They are likely not as bad as they look, but read reviews.
Anyway, after our delicious, if boring, lunch we headed over to see the Buffalo. It’s right off of route 94 and easy to find. It’s in a little tourist complex that includes an RV Park, the National Buffalo Museum, a little Frontier Town, an overlook of a wild buffalo herd and of course the World’s Largest Buffalo.
Since we had the dogs with us we opted just to walk around outside since we couldn’t take them into the museum. It looks like a small but nice museum though and it might have been fun to walk through and there is a great overlook on the back from where you can sit and enjoy the wild herd.. It was still easy to see the wild buffalo though without going into the museum.
In the back area of the National Buffalo Museum is an overlook where you can view a wild buffalo herd. 
You can see a handful of the buffalo herd sleeping on the hillside.
Once the dogs were fed and watered we took a walk through the Frontier Town to see the Buffalo Statue. I am sure if it weren’t a pandemic all the shops would be open, but coronavirus strikes again. None the less it was a perfect place to stop. Lots of opportunities for hokey road trip photos.
After spending some times there and using the restrooms at the museum we continued to downtown Jamestown which is a typical western frontier town. I wanted to see the Basilica of St. James and it was a lovely quiet spot to visit before returning to the road. You can read more about the Basilica in my next post.
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