2007/06 BC trip - North Dakota Badlands |
|||
Wednesday July 25th
We had another steamy night until a blustery cool wind in the early hours caused us to retreat under the covers. The rest of Highway 2 has been a familiar route for us since 1980: Browning, Shelby, Havre, Malta, Glasgow, and Wolf Point. The bigger towns now have casinos but the dreary little ones, every twenty miles or so, seem to have changed little in 25 years.
We had a long day’s drive, mostly in the 80s, passing through showers. We crossed into North Dakota and drove south to the CCC campground on the Little Missouri River. One loop was full of horse trailers, horses, and cowboy hats, so we picked the other loop.
I went for a walk along the Maah Daah Hey trail. The flowers we’d been seeing a month earlier were all 
gone, but the rain had brought out the overpowering scent of sage brush and junipers. It had also brought out the ankle biters, little flies, which is why Sandie didn’t come along.
Thursday July 26th
It was a very hot morning, probably the reason why all the other campers were in the other loop under the trees. We probably could have made it home in one long day by just blasting along the freeway, but we chose to drive back roads and take a couple of days.
We followed Highway 200 and soon came to the Knife River Indian Village and 
stopped there to make tea. As so often happens, that was half a day gone. As we walked into the visitors’ centre, an elderly ranger invited us to go listen to her in the earth lodge. Two hundred years ago, at the time of Lewis and Clark, there were thousands of Mandan Indians living in towns of these earth lodges. Within a few decades they were nearly all gone, wiped out by smallpox. The Knife River national historic centre is a recreation of a little of the town and also a museum of the Mandan Indians’ culture.
It was rather hot there so we drove to nearby Fort Mandan for lunch, a lovely picnic area under the cottonwoods