Wow, what a night we had! Our Sweet Neighbor Sue and her husband The Fire Captain are very busy people who thrive on work and always seem to have a smile on their face and a giggle in their story. They have their home and hay-field across the street from us, as well as their family ranch, hay fields and buffalo ranch about 17 miles up the road and their town jobs. However, now that The Fire Captain has retired from the department, he has a more ‘normal’ life with only 2 homes/farms/ranches to take care of…and a herd of buffalo.
We were invited for a delightful summer evening at the ranch. We loaded into his jeep with the top down and drove the scenic route to the ranch. The road we were on has some deep roots as it was an original Indian trail and the view…breathtaking.
We dined on elk steak at their ranch, that has been in his family since the land was settled in the 1800’s.
I loved being there and seeing their history. The feel of the land and the buildings with so much of their rich past, not unlike the sense of the ranch my great grandparents started in the 1860’s in California.
We’d also come to see the buffalo. Buffalo are not tame animals, so don’t let these pictures fool you. We drove into the field with the cows and the calves. They were not as ‘broad’ as I’d imagined, but still at hundreds of pounds a piece, being wary is a good thing…
The Fire Captain tosses alfalfa cubes to them so that they will come up close to the jeep where the rest of us were somewhat safely ensconced.
There is one old gal, Buffy who is being kept as a favor to live out her buffalo life…she is ‘tame’…and will eat out of The Fire Captain’s hand, but let me tell you, she made My Loving Spouse and my Sweet Neighbor Sue very nervous as she peered into the jeep alongside them.
In another prairie field is the Bull and the butcher bulls, which sort of tells you where they will be headed someday. They are bigger and wilder and no, there is no driving through them with a bucket of cubes.
Then we took a sunset drive through the prairie that they dry farm for hay…what a wonderful night… 
…friends are good and we are blessed.
Wow! Gorgeous pictures! And I can’t image why Ellen would leave out the part about a buffalo head in your lap, Pat!
Some one’s kissed the blarney stone. She wS just being friendly…
There is an itsy bitsy part that Ellen left out, Buffy came a little closer than discribed, as my neighbor hand fed her a cube or two I asked if I could. “Sure her are a couple of cubes” and handed them to me while I sat in the front passenger seat, (no door, roof or windshield just a roll bar), I tentatively offered a cube, it was taken very gently, I offered another, again taken well. Now I am out of cube and Buffy thinks she is on to a good thing, I had a VERY large head almost in my lap, a big brown eyeball and a horn less than a foot from my face, eventually she realized I had no more cubes and retreated much to my relief but what an experiance!