June 2 Bismarck ND to Theodore Roosevelt Park

June 2 - Bismarck ND to Theodore Roosevelt National Park South Unit

We're still on East Coast Time so are up and going a lot earlier than places are open. After filling up with $2.29 diesel, we followed the Missouri River along Route 1804, stopping at several places to see this historic waterway.

The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center near Washburn, ND had unusually good
exhibits, history of their trip and paintings by a Swiss artist who followed their trail several years later. Fort Mandan, several miles down the river, is part of the exhibit and was a recreated fort where L&C over wintered. All I could think of was the tight quarters for all those men, animals, one woman and a baby - plus a huge Newfoundland who walked from St. Louis to the Pacific and back.





Route 200A is a scenic, straight, ribbon like road cutting through farms. Anywhere you go in NOrth Dakota it seems it is uphill against a wind. Even downhill is against the wind. And yes there are many wind farms to take advantage of this power. This time we saw the herd of deer crossing the road ahead of us and had slowed to a crawl. One late deer ran across just before we started up again. We seem to be large animal cursed this trip. The pheasant that flew by are so beautiful.

Knife River Indian Center had a recreation of a summer earth lodge. We have tons of room in our TCs compared to putting 40 people into a round dome with fire pit in the middle. On we went to Killdeer, down to Dickinson to resupply at Walmart. Good old Walmart has become our TC provision center. Most of them have RVs parked on the edges of the lots.



Back onto I-94 to Painted Canyon National Site which is right on I-94. This is the start of ND's Badlands, a softer, more colorful version of South Dakota's Badlands. At Madora, we entered the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Medora is a quaint little town which has a summer theater, a restaurant famous for cooking steaks on a pitchfork over open fire and way too many tourist shops though they have kept the glitz and neon out.

One of the advantages to getting older is the Golden Age Pass to National Parks. We paid $00 to get into TR Park and the camp fee tonight will be $5.00. Something back from the government?

We drove the 36 mile interior park loop seeing for the first time herds of wild horses. Farctic Ox had told us long ago that the wild horses moved differently than domesticated ones and he was right. We were fortunate enough to see a herd running and could just picture Indians waiting around the canyon to capture them. Buffalo are here also but not in as abundance as Yellowstone. Beautiful drive with a lot of pullouts and no traffic at all. We actually only saw three other vehicles in 36 miles.



Camped the night in Cottonwood Camp which is right beside the Little Missouri River. Flat, level, no hookups and just beautiful quiet. We are now two hours body time ahead of local time so saw dawn creep into the canyon.

Today we head to the north unit of TR Park and then over into Montana.