The drive (almost due north) from South Dakota to North Dakota was anything but straight. I zigged and zagged around towns, farms, and outcroppings of rocks (bigger than hills, but not exactly mountains). Along the way, I started seeing a crop that didn’t look familiar. I had to look it up. It turned out to be canola. It was blooming and was beautiful. There were other crops that were unfamiliar as well. Thank goodness for the Picture It app that helped me identify them.
I have been a Theodore Roosevelt fan since I was in elementary school. If I had to do a report on a President, he was always the one I picked. I read biographies of him and stories about him throughout my childhood. There were many things I admired about the man. One was his feeling about the importance of conservation, and the commitments he made in setting aside lands for public use and protection. I knew that Roosevelt had spent time in the Dakotas before they were states, or shortly after. But I had never had a chance to get to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota. Upon leaving the Badlands of South Dakota, I found myself going to Bar X Ranch outside of Medora, North Dakota. Up until then, I thought it was basically a big bison pasture. I was wrong. It’s a Badlands. There are bison there, and there are wild horses still roaming the park.
When you search something on the internet, you usually wind up getting feeds of similar things that might interest you. Suddenly, it seemed my Facebook and Google feeds were full of Medora, North Dakota advertisements. These guys have done a great job of triggering their AdWords on Google. I went online and bought…brunch with Teddy Roosevelt, the Medora Musical, the Pitchfork Fondue, and The Strenuous Theodore Roosevelt. They were all reasonably priced, and I was looking forward to them.
The town includes fewer than 700 people full-time, clearly dedicated to supporting tourists. Gift shops and restaurants are everywhere, along with comfortable parking options, the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame (which I did not tour), and the entrance to the national park. They were all downtown, as well as three or four venues that host events. They also had free entertainment, music, comedy, or children’s events, and a gathering area. In addition, there were a couple of playgrounds, and Point to Point Park, which has a miniature golf course, lazy river, swimming pool, and a playground for visitors’ enjoyment.
This is a town that caters to tourists coming to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, to people who just like the ambiance of being in a resort area, and to those who come semi-regularly for great food at the Pitchfork Fondue and a good time at the musical. To make it even more appealing, the musical show is different every year.
The steak was excellent. One of my favorite ways to eat beef is deep fried in oil. My serving was enough for two meals. The musical was fun and engaging. This is the town’s 60th year of doing the musical, and they take great pride in exploring and presenting their history. The two Theodore Roosevelt presentations were both very good. The brunch with T.R. was more entertaining, and I thought the person who played Teddy Roosevelt portrayed his boisterous personality very well. I spoke to him afterwards after reading his bio. He is a University of the South at Sewanee grad and knew a couple of friends of mine. It is a small world.
I stayed on a ranch. There was virtually no one there, but the flies were horrible. So, I did not spend nearly as much time outside as I would have liked to do. The views were attractive, and the amenities were cute. I actually saw that General Store open but didn’t not get a chance to go in when it was.
Wild horses were all around the ranch. Coming and going in and out of the ranch to town, I would routinely get trapped behind the horses. Of course, I took plenty of opportunity to take pictures. Most had young colts with them. It was great fun to watch the colts prance and jog, and plod beside what I assumed were their mothers.
I went exploring the National Park and at one point, I left it. Not wanting to take the same road back, I was looking for a loop. After about five miles, I gave up. Just as I was about to turn around in a long driveway, I saw this steep slope. I rolled my window down to grab a picture of a cow standing at the top of the hill. When I did, I heard it mooing loudly. I looked, and in the grass below, there was a calf. It was obviously a fairly young calf which looked like it just couldn’t get back up the slope. I watched for a couple of seconds, snapped a few pictures, and then wondered if there was something I could do to help. I kept hearing the cow call out to her calf, and then I saw the calf start to make it up the slope. She paused. The cow called louder and more urgently. The moos changed tone and I could understand by her tone what she was trying to tell the calf. The calf tried again, and this time made it up to her mom. When she got near mom, the mom nuzzled her and encouraged her to feed for a few minutes as reward or comfort for her trauma and for her success. You could hear the mom saying, ‘Come on, you can do it, keep trying, you can do it, I know you can. You have to help yourself, keep trying.’ It seemed very mom-like, regardless of the species of mammal.
There’s a rest area on I-94 called the Painted Canyon that is an official part of the national park. The first time I had seen something similar was where there was an overlook into the Badlands. I went through there a couple of times, each time getting different angles of sun and pictures to come up with my best views of the North Dakota Badlands.
On one of the days that I did not have something scheduled in Medora, I made a drive to Gladstone, North Dakota, which is the beginning of a 32-mile art drive called the Enchanted Highway. At some point in time, the property owners got together and created scrap metal art. There are eight very large metal sculptures along the 32-mile route. Each one is marked with what direction the next one is and how far away it is. When you arrive in the little town of Regent, it’s all about being the end of the Enchanted Highway. Each piece had an appropriate description of the piece, as well as how it fit into the highway. The area is flat, gravel, and has good visibility for taking photos.
It’s amazing to me how towns find ways to create attract people to them, and how they capitalize on those attractions for the betterment of the economic vitality of their communities. At this point, I was done with my time in western North Dakota, and so now it was on to the east part of the state.
