Big, big sky

Down from the mountains. Everything is wide, wide open. Not flat. Big, endless rolling hills. We could see:

About 4 different weather systems (and we managed to outride one & were lucky enough to ride right between two others);

A cow - on my side of the fence;

A horse - on my side of the fence until it spotted me. Then it bolted back to the other side and scared all its horse-buddies into mini-stampede;

Two dogs - guess what? - on our side of the fence. We were at a nice river crossing & were thinking of stopping for lunch, but when I saw two good-sized dogs bearing down on us purposefully I decided we might find a better spot. They followed. Never a bark or a threat. Turned out they just thought it might be fun to follow us for a bit. We were climbing one of the rollers so there was no way we could leave them behind. I got off to walk in hopes of boring them. Nope. They followed us for a couple of miles, taking occasional side trips into the fields or the ditches or across the street. Finally we managed to outpace them on a descent. They were great dogs - wish we could have taken them all the way;

Lots of little ground squirrels.

Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam - yes, we saw our first little herd of buffalo this morning, too, the shape clear against the (big) sky;

And the skies are not cloudy all day- we're going to have to work on that one. Our hostess at today's B&B tells us their normal annual rainfall is 11". Last week they had 10". Yikes.

51 miles today;
791 so far (I think)