The horseback riding just put us in the mood for even more large herbivores, so we drove out to the Lake Audy bison preserve, still in Riding Mountain National Park. It’s a very large fenced in area beside the lake where the bison are free to roam. You drive into the preserve and can observe the bison from the safety of a gated viewing platform, or drive your car around on a looped gravel road to get a better view. We tried both but the bison are damned cagey beasts and came nowhere near the platform or road. In fact, they stayed almost exactly equidistant from every viewing position. No way that’s fluke. There is a bison Archimedes working out the angles. We stayed on into dusk viewing them through binoculars and spotting scope. Don’t tell Steph, but I let the Those Johnston Kids sit in the sunroof while we drove slowly around, just like being on safari. I did my best Marlin Perkins.

We stayed so late that it was dark by the time we got back to our campsite. That’s late. I’m not sure if I’m mentioned, but we are so far north that sunset is quite late, and darkness doesn’t fall until long after that. There is still quite enough evening light to read by at 11 PM. That, combined with an utter lack of official bedtime has the kids burning their lamps long after they would ordinarily be asleep. Whatever – we’re on vacation.