Friday, June 6th

A Walk in a Park

Whether it is the cold front that has moved in over night—the skies are dull and grey and the temperature has fallen to fifty Fahrenheit—or whether it is because I ODed on sugar yesterday, I wake up with quite a headache. The standard procedure in this case is to continue as planned and see how things develop.

Thus, I head out eastbound along the Interstate motorway after breakfast. Right after Glendive the badlands start. In my mind, that name had conjured barren moonscapes where astronauts went for training. My mind had been wrong: at least these badlands were really just regular grassland prairie. This couldn’t just have been a fluke brought upon by ample rain, since one Theodore Roosevelt had a ranch in this area.

Mr. Roosevelt was in fact the reason why I took the Interstate for once as the only way to reach the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Unit. But first, a weighing station indicated that the road was about to cross into a new state. The first exit in this new state, North Dakota, was called Beach in a bit of a sham for there was not the least bit of water or sand to be found.

The road had crossed through a short bit of mountainous area, but not the landscape was mostly flat. There were a few table mountains to be seen off in the distance. Further along, there some of these buttes were also to be found along the motorway, but they were covered in grass.

Eventually, I reached the exit for the park, crossed the Little Missouri Scenic River and entered into Medora. The town had tried to replicate a frontier western feel with dark wooded houses. Even the petrol station tried to stick to the style.

The south unit of the park featured a thirty-six mile loop road at the start of which several sign warned the visitor to better leave bison alone. As someone who already is a bit afraid of cows, I surely wouldn’t go near any of the beasts. First, though, I came across another animal prominent in the park: prairie dogs. Not even remotely similar to dogs, they are rodents, related to squirrels. About one foot tall, they like to stand up and stare into the grassland and only hurry of the road in the last possible moment. The park map marked the areas where they lived as ‘Prairie Dog Town.’

About a third into the loop, a short hike named Coal Vein Trail promised views onto an area where a coal vein had been on fire between 1951 and 1977. Unfortunately, thirty years later nothing of that spectacle was visible any more to the untrained eye. Even so, it was a nice little walk.

Yet another side road arrived at Buck Hill, which also featured a trail atop its 2855 feet or 870 metre peek. Unfortunately, that trail was currently in use by a little herd of bison, so, see above. Instead I finished the loop. Halfway towards the end, yet another herd of Bison was grazing along the road. None of the beasts really were bothered by the car, so I could slide by rather closely. Man, are they big.

I left the park and had to make a decision. The original plan was to drive down to Rapid City, perhaps four hours away. However, my head hadn’t really improved and I wasn’t really looking forward to four more hours on the road. So I decided to only finish the Interstate driving to the place were I would have turned off south: Dickinson.

I returned to the Interstate and headed east again. Soon I entered into Stark County—I leave the appropriate joke to the reader as an exercise. Closer towards Dickinson, oil wells appeared again and plenty of trucks could be seen on the roads. I feared my plan could yet again be foiled by hotel prices, but they turned out to be quite normal, perhaps only because it was Friday. So I booked myself into a room and threw the blankets over my aching head again.