Everyone survived the night! We woke up and decided to go first to the Visitor Center. It had a pretty cool museum about the park history and the relationship with Theodore Roosevelt. We went to a Ranger talk and Cabin Tour of the cabin Theodore Roosevelt built on his ranch out here.
Joey and Lily outside Teddy Roosevelt's cabin wearing "mustaches"
While everything in the cabin is from the same time period, only two things actually belonged to Theodore Roosevelt. One of them is this traveling chest. We learned that wealthy people had round-topped chests to make sure they were always loaded on top so that they would be unloaded first.
Inside the museum. All the clothes and gear here actually belonged to and was used by Theodore Roosevelt.
Here Katy gives a video tour of the cabin:
We asked about the petrified forest and found out it was about a 3 mile hike, and we would have to drive about 30 minutes to the trailhead. Since we had the whole day ahead of us, and it sounded pretty neat, we decided to go for it. The weather was perfect - in the low 70s, partly cloudy - which was great since the hike was over the plains and buttes with no shade at all. Yesterday was in the 80s so we lucked out on cooler temperatures for today.
The hike started in the open prairie. Classic North Dakota.
It wasn't long before we reached an area with lots of cool land formations, reminded us of Badlands National Park
And there were LOTS of petrified trees like this one
And lots of climbing opportunities
Bits of petrified wood all over the place
Katy conquers the hill
Lily: "Take my picture!"
Exceptionally large petrified tree
Sweeping views. We had hoped to see wildlife, but we didn't see anything much. The middle of the day is not a good time for seeing animals.
Joey finds another cactus bunch
We spent probably about an hour and half on that hike, and got back around noon. We wanted to do the scenic loop drive through the park, but had read that it was better to do either early in the morning or at dusk so you would have a better chance of seeing wildlife. We decided to head into the nearby town of Medora to get some more groceries for dinner and to try to find a Wifi connection so I could check some emails and get a little bit of work done. It’s been surprising to me how difficult it has been on this trip to find cellular service just to make phone calls and send texts, let alone get a cellular data signal or find a place with good Wifi. This town was no different - the cell service was spotty and none of the coffee shops in town had Wifi! We did find a hotel with an open Wifi connection, and a great playground nearby for the kids, so I spent a couple hours working while they played on the playground. I could see the playground from where I was sitting, but I guess nobody else in the family could see me and they were a little upset I was gone working for so long and were unable to find or call me. :(
It was late afternoon at this point and everyone was pretty hungry, so we went to the only “grocery” store in the town. It was very limited, but we got some tortilla chips, cheddarwurst, hot dog buns, ketchup packets, and a can of baked beans. Back at the camp site we successfully built one last fire with dead and downed wood we found nearby, and grilled the cheddarwurst. We opened the can of beans and set it right on the grill since we hadn’t bought along any cooking pots, and that worked rather well. At this point we are trying to use up food we already purchased since we are nearing the end of our trip. We had salsa, shredded cheese, and queso left over, and we ate that with the tortilla chips. The cheddarwurst were delicious. We had one nectarine and two apples left, so we cut those up and shared them. We had some s’mores supplies left and roasted the rest of the marshmallows and everyone had a couple of s’mores to finish up dinner. It was now about 5:30pm, and we thought that would be a perfect time to get back in the van to drive around the park and see what animals we could find.
Bison grazing in the prairie dog village. You can see prairie dogs if you look closely! We saw SO MANY.
One ranger told us that an easy way to gauge if you are a safe distance away from bison is to hold out your arm straight in front of you with your thumb up. If your thumb covers up the bison, you are far enough away. If not, better back up! This bison kept coming closer and closer, so we quick snapped this dramatic photo and then got back in the van!
The scenery was really amazing but I think it was a bit early, because there were not many animals out and about. We stopped and hiked up the Buck Hill trail - only 0.2 miles round trip, so a total piece of cake! It’s the highest accessible point in the park so the views were incredible.
Heading up
There was some kind of road collapse, so the Scenic Loop Road is no longer a true loop, and you get to a point where you have to turn around and drive back the way you came. We saw all kinds of animals on the drive back, so I guess that proves that there is a greater chance of seeing animals if you wait a little bit closer to sunset.
Mule Deer
Another close up bison
More mule deer, in the road and a bunch more on the right
Wild horses
Here's another awesome video by Katy!
The last hike we wanted to do was Wind Canyon, which was supposed to be a great place to watch the sun set and the best overlook of the Little Missouri River in the park. It was a little cloudy, but still very pretty. Another short hike, only 0.4 miles round trip.
Short, but steep!
On the drive back to the campground it was getting quite dark, and we saw a bull elk with a huge set of antlers. It was hard to get a good photo, was much cooler in person! We had seen lots of elk on the trip, but not any with big antlers, so it was a nice way to end the night.
Back at the campsite we all played the game Love Letter. We haven’t had much down time to play games on the trip because we’ve been traveling so much, and this was actually a super fun game. Everyone was able to play except Katy, and she had fun running around and looking at everyone’s cards and “helping”. The kids wanted to stay up and keep playing more games, but I was feeling pretty tired and it was getting pretty chilly - we could see our breath in the air - so I wrapped it up and we all went to bed. We had thought about driving out away from the campground trees and lights to get an unobstructed view of the super dark skies, but it was a little cloudy and we were all pretty tired so we decided not to. Will be something to come back for in the future - they actually have a big annual astronomy event here that starts after we leave tomorrow that sounds pretty good. We can’t do everything in one trip, that’s for sure!
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