Wide Open Spaces

Daily Mileage=239;Total trip=9510

Before I go on with today's blog, I have to add a comment about Devil's Tower that we visited yesterday. Brian and Andrea called to remind me (and I was going to put this in and forgot it) that Devil's Tower is really famous because of its appearance in a movie. Can you guess which one? He said it came out in 1977 so let's see who is old enough to remember it?

Now, today we spent the day in the two units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. They are about 70 miles from each other but the part of North Dakota that's in between is like most of ND so far, prairie grass and ranches. The park is named in honor of Theodore Roosevelt who did more for the National Park System than anyone before (or since). He loved the area and lived here for awhile. Parts of his ranch are still here in the park.

The park has not only miles of grassland but a section of its own "badlands." Badlands out here means it's rocky, cavernous and not good for too much. However, through erosion of water and time, the views are stupendous. The major difference between this park and the Badlands NP in SD is there is more grassland and vegetation here than down there. Even the grassland has a variety of grass types to support the various animals that are present in the park. (No fighting over the resource.) There are bison, elk, antelope, prairie dogs and a host of birds, mostly songbirds. The bison really do roam freely and they tell you to watch out for them on the trails. (Great now I don't have to worry about bears, just the 2,000 pound bison charging me! However, we saw lots of fresh buffalo poop (scat) and tracks on the trail, but no bison in our way. )

The trails we did today took us down by the river, the Little Missouri River (which actually ends up in the Missouri and Mississippi basins) and is not so little, as well as by the desert like caverns where there are all kinds of rock formations. Here are some views we saw.

The colors in the rock formations are amazing. The blue is volcanic ash that comes from the birth of the Rocky Mountains. The red is oxidized iron in the rock. The most interesting strata of rock we saw today was a vein of coal (black) that actually burned from 1951 until 1977. You can still see the black line in the rock. Apparently it caught on fire from lighting and smoldered all those years. (There was sign at the site that indicated people toasted marshmallows at it! Pretty weird, isn't it?)

There are also a number of "slides" or "slumps" in which a rather large piece of the rock formation detaches and slides down the mountain. You can see where it would fit back together again by aligning the strata in the rock. Here's one we tried to photograph.

Then there's just the different names for the rock formations that result from eroision. There's the CapRock(eventually the bottom will give away and it will completely fall apart) and the Cannonball Concretions (not always round but definitely a different rock within a rock).

We had a good day, the weather was beautiful, in fact it's been in the 70's but feels warmer when you're out in the sun. The views were gorgeous. We would recommend the park if someone is looking for solitude. There are really more animals than people out here but we've been seeing that in all of North Dakota. The park has great vistas and some excellent trails, too bad it's so far away!

We had dinner tonight in the cowboy town right outside the southern park unit, Medora. It's a typical western town as we have described before. We ate at the Iron Horse Saloon. All I can say is it really was a saloon. Instead of a card game going on in the corner, they had one blackjack table and some electronic gambling machines. We were surrounded by cowboys and some old motorcycle guys! Of course we had steak. What else would we eat in a western saloon?

We finished our book, The Mistress of Death. It was very good and we would recommend it if you like 12century history. It was a novel/mystery but the author spent time on the historic details. If you liked Pope Joan you'd like this book.

We're now onto another of what is becoming one of our favorite authors David Rosenfelt (for light legal mystery type books). The reason we like him is because his main character is a defense attorney from Paterson NJ who inherited a ton of money and doesn't have to take cases but does once in awhile. He has a golden retriever, Tara, and a typical northeastern sarcastic sense of humor. The actor who does the reading even has the Jersey accent down. They're also pretty funny . The one we're listening to now is Sudden Death.

Tomorrow we're onto Fargo and staying in Minnesota by one of it's 10,000 lakes. Hopefully, it won't be raining and flooding when we get there!

Love & Joy,

Mare & Rich