25 Aug - 3 Sep 2023
I saved the best of North Dakota for last. TRNP has been on my bucket list for a while and it did not disappoint! It's one of the best places to see wildlife I've ever been to.
Herd of bison roaming the prairie. To me, this is quintessential TRNP.
I would've loved to have stayed inside the park at Cottonwood Campground but they didn't have hookups and it was still too warm to leave the fur babies in the trailer without air conditioning. Instead, I stayed just outside the park in the town of Medora at Red Trail Campground. The sites were a little close together but not too bad. It was close enough to walk into town and only about a mile or two to the park entrance.
It was late afternoon and since dogs aren't allowed on trails, I took Sage on a drive-thru of the park. She enjoyed looking at everything and surprisingly was non-reactive to all the animals. I really thought she'd bark at the prairie dogs but she didn't.
This guy was at an overlook I wanted to walk out to. Needless to say I stayed in the truck. There were people at the end of it that were kind of stuck there until he moved on.
The next day I went back alone to further explore the park. A stop at the visitor's center is a must. I love the displays and learning the history of the parks. TRNP is, of course, name after our 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt. He was a sickly child with debilitating asthma. He discovered the benefits of exercise to minimize his asthma and took boxing lessons to strengthen his body. He studied biology and became an accomplished naturalist and published ornithologist.
Tragedy struck on February 14, 1884. Two days after his daughter was born, his wife, Alice died from undiagnosed kidney disease. Earlier that morning, in the same house, his mother died from typhoid fever. Distraught, he left his daughter in the care of his sister, Anna, and moved to the ranch he'd built near what is now TRNP. He stayed two years believing the hard work would keep him from depression before returning to New York, where he married his childhood sweetheart, Edith, and regained custody of his daughter, Alice.
This is Roosevelt's triple barrel rifle. I never knew such a thing existed. There was also a story about how thieves had stolen his boat. His friends built a flat bottom boat and they set off after them. They found the men three days later, 100 miles down river. Roosevelt marched them 45 miles to the nearest jail. His friend commented "Don't think we will have anything more stolen from us." Nope, I bet they won't either.
Oct 14, 1912, while campaigning under the Bull Moose party, Roosevelt was shot in the chest while he was making a speech in Milwaukee. Pale and shaken he said "I will make this speech or die". Here you can see the bullet hole in his under shirt. My question is, how did they get the blood out? It looks too clean to be the actual shirt he was wearing. Hmmm...
After the visitor center I continued into the park. First stop is Prairie Dog village.
There are several "prairie dog villages" in the park. They may be destructive rodents but you have to admit they're cute!
There are several herds of wild horses in the park. Notice the bison on the hill above?
Speaking of bison this is where I got stuck in a bison jam and a ranger threatened to arrest me. Yeah, he was wound a little tight.
I barely had my hands outside my truck holding the camera (my mirrors stuck out further than my hands). When the ranger drove by he stopped and jumped all over me saying I needed to keep my hands inside the vehicle. I was very respectful and apologized. Then he went on and on about he could arrest me for "harassing the wildlife". I was shocked. It wasn't like I was yelling at the bison or waving my hands around. I was sitting quietly, filming them walk by. I know it's their job to keep everyone safe and enforce the rules but he was overly aggressive in his approach and I truly didn't think anything of just quietly filming them. I figured he was having a bad day (you know they put up with a lot of idiots) and thanked him for letting me know the rules. Other than that, it was an amazing experience...and yes, I kept my hands inside the truck the rest of the time I was there 😇 mostly.
This was the highlight of my trip! I pulled over to take pictures of the river and valley and this bald eagle was soaring along river. Every time I see this picture it takes my breath away. They're so majestic and beautiful. Later I also saw a golden eagle flying over the prairie dog village but I wasn't able to get a picture in time.
I hiked up to the top of Buck Hill (it's only 0.1 miles but it's straight up. It provides 360 degree views of the badlands
After being in the trailer all day, I took Sage on a walk through town. She saw this bunny and wanted it sooo bad. It took me forever to get her out of there. This girl is strong! I wish I'd taken more pictures of Medora. It's very small and touristy place, but cute none-the-less.
After our walk I decided to catch the sunset back inside the park.
On the way home I stopped at the only store in town for gas. I didn't know they still had these pumps! It took me a minute to realize there was no "pay at the pump" option here. I also had to think a minute on how to operate it. It's been awhile since I've used one and it brought back a lot of memories.
The next day I hiked the Coal Vein Nature Trail. This area was impacted by an underground
coal vein fire. It was ignited by a lightning strike and burned for 26 years, from 1951 to 1977. Some days there was only a wisp of smoke and other days red-hot rock glowed at the bottom of deep crevasses. The colors of the rock tell a story. The brick red rock (can't see it here) is called clinker. It forms when coal veins catch fire and bake the rock above, and changes it into this much harder red rock. The brown and tan rock, sandstone, siltstone and mudstone, are sediments washed down from the mountains. The Black layer is coal, and the blue-grey at the bottom is bentonite clay made of ash from volcanoes.
A clinker chimney is formed when a coal fire burns deep into the hillside. The cracks in the rock layers allowed air to be sucked down into the fire. Fire burned up the cracks and baked the rocks nearby forming vertical "chimneys". Chimneys are the hottest part of the fire. This chimney was exposed when softer sediments around it eroded away.
After I made it through the bison jam I decided to take a walk down to the Little Missouri River. It can vary from raging river carrying logs and debris to a muddy trickle depending on the time of the year and amount of rainfall.
The Little Missouri River is the only water source in the park that can support fish and provide necessary water for the resident wildlife. I didn't stay too long because there had been bison spotted near here and I didn't want to get caught between them and my truck.
There are so many geological features in the park. One example are these pillars and capstones. The relatively hard sandstone shields the underlying clay from rain erosion, sometimes forming pillars with capstones
I was coming down the hill and saw something crossing the road. I realized it was a coyote and hurried to get my camera out and get closer. The only reason I was able to get this shot is because he stopped to poop before he ran off into the brush! I wasn't 100% sure it was a coyote so I went back to the visitor center to ask the ranger. She confirmed it and said in all the years she's worked there she'd never seen one in the park. Very cool.
Behind the visitor center is Roosevelt's first home, the Maltese Cross Cabin. Before he left for the Dakota Badlands in 1883, he purchased the primary interest in the Chimney Butte Ranch (locally known as the Maltese Cross Ranch). Located seven miles south of Medora, the ranch's brand was the eight pointed Maltese Cross. Roosevelt requested the ranch managers build the one and a half story cabin with three separate rooms for him on the bottom (kitchen, living room and bedroom) and a sleeping loft upstairs for the ranch hands. This was a temporary home for him while he split his time over the next several years between Dakota and New York.
In 1884 he established a second ranch named the Elkhorn where he lived until 1887.
During his presidency, the cabin was displayed at the World's Fair in St Louis MO. It then traveled to Portland OR for the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. The cabin spent time in Fargo before finding a home on the state capital grounds in Bismarck. Eventually the Daughters of the American Revolution took over care of it and twelve years after the National Park was established it was fully restored and moved to its permanent home behind the visitor center.
The writing desk is a replica of the one Roosevelt used at Elkhorn. The park preserves the authentic one in a climate-controlled facility. The rocking chair is believed to be his but they're not 100% sure. All the other pieces are authentic to the period but not tied to Roosevelt.
The kitchen pieces are similar to those Roosevelt would've had. Coal dug from nearby hillsides fueled the cabins two stoves providing heat and warm food.
The white book hutch once held Roosevelt's books and was used as a writing desk when the hinged writing surface was folded out. His experiences as a rancher, recorded in books and letters, would later influence his dedication to preserving natural resources.
Look who came to visit me! My friend from Fargo, (formerly from Georgia), Debra. We'd heard so many good things about the Medora Musical we had to check it out. There are people I talked to who come here every summer to see the show.
We were both underwhelmed. Maybe past shows were really good, but this one reminded me of a cheesy Six Flags show (no offense to Six Flags). Enough said about that.
I really enjoyed my time with Debra. Unfortunately, she had to drive back the next day.
After Debra left I drove up to the North Unit of TRNP. It's about an hour from Medora and less visited but just as beautiful. I really wanted to camp up there and spend a few days exploring, but the nearest RV park with electricity was in Watford City and they ban pit bulls so that wasn't going to work for me. If my girl isn't welcome then neither am I. Instead I had to settle for a day trip (which ended abruptly).
Of course the first thing you do is encounter another bison jam. After all, this is TRNP.
The day I went, it was very windy and smoky. The fires from Canada were raging and the smoke had carried down. You can see here how hazy it was.
This is one of the things I came to see. These are called cannonball concretions.
They're formed when mineral-rich water deposits minerals as it seeps through porous sediment layers. The minerals act like glue, binding the sediments together, forming concretions. Erosion has exposed some of them while others are still covered by the butte.
Notice how the hills in the background have stripes that are horizontal but the smaller hill on the lower right is diagonal? This is a geological feature called slumping. Slumping is caused when rain flowing into the cracks of the hill weakens it, especially where it saturates bentonite clay layers which become slippery when wet. As the bentonite slides, the hill slowly slumps away.
I tried to get a panorama of the entire river bend but it was so smoky it turned out awful. You can get an idea here of just how beautiful this overlook is.
Since the smoke was so bad, I decided I would only do one short hike. I drove back down to the Little Mo Trail that goes along the river. I put on my backpack, grabbed my trekking poles and set off. At the trailhead they have brochures that explain what is along the trail so I stopped to pick one up, turned around and bam! Felt a hot stinging pain on the back of my arm. A dang wasp stung me!
The last time I was stung, (ironically in pretty much the same location), my whole upper arm turned red and swollen, and where the stinger got me, it blistered up. It was so bad I had to see a doctor and get steroids for it. I was not about to go through that again so I left the park and went to the nearest pharmacy for Benadryl. Of course it makes me sleepy so I called it a day and headed back to Medora. The next day it was a little swollen but not bad at all.
I had one last place on my agenda and that was the Petrified Forest Trail. Just a few miles away from the park is the loop that takes you through two "forests". The northern forest is larger but the southern trail is shorter. I got kind of a late start so I did the southern trail.
On the way there I was on the lookout for pronghorn antelope and I saw three! I was so excited to have seen them.
I must have hit it at just the right time. I'd passed one guy on the trail and ended up having the whole place to myself.
Before we left I had to take one last scenic drive through the park. It never disappoints!
Well, I hope you enjoyed my trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park! Next time we're headed to my favorite place in the USA...so far.
This is really cool! The last picture of the huge bison is such a great shot!