2005/06 Alaska Trip - Road West - Teddy Roosevelt national park |
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We were headed for one of our favourite campgrounds, the CCC in the North Dakota Badlands. This was a long
haul on a 100 degree day, 450 miles, but mainly simple freeway driving. The truck floor became so hot on the passenger side that I had to add a log to serve as a footrest.
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North Dakota (Teddy Roosevelt) |
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The CCC campground is very popular with the horse riding community as it’s at one end of the Maah Daah Hey, a 100 mile trail that connects the two parts of Teddy Roosevelt park. However, it’s a rough drive into the campground, so others don’t use it much, and this time it was empty. Consequently the local flies were hungry and delighted to see us. The Badlands looked much greener 
than usual and had obviously seen some recent rain. The air was hot and humid and the trailer was even hotter, so it was a really sweaty evening.
Thursday June 23rd
Thursday dawned cooler and windier, so it promised to be better for hiking and there seemed 
to be fewer bugs. We were going to spend the day in the park’s north unit. We drove to the end of the park road, past the bison herd, which seems to be growing, to Oxbow Overlook, and 
hiked down from there to the Little Missouri River.
Much of the Badlands is bentonite clay, which flows downhill when wet, so trails quickly fall apart, and hikes tend to be scrambles up and down rocks. The scenery though is spectacular with weird rock 
formations, and erosions, and the vegetation is very aromatic, a mixture of sage brush and juniper, with an understory of prickly pear cactus for the unwary toe. 
The cacti were flowering, so they were pretty as well as painful. We made it down to the mud at the river’s edge, but it was much hotter down in the valley and we had a tough climb out and back up to the truck.
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Teddy Roosevelt (17.58) |
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After some recovery time in the shade of some cottonwood trees, we took an easier walk across one of the valleys to a prairie dog town. The prairie dogs were nervous when we first arrived, but we stood very still and after a while they just 
ignored us and went about their lives. We were engrossed in watching them and only looked up when their warning cries became frantic. A very large bull bison had walked into the town 
behind us, and was dangerously close to Sandie. The bulls get pushed out of the herd when they get old, and they just wander around as bad-tempered loners. This one, however, only wanted a dust bath, and he just walked into the town and rolled around on top of the dogs’ burrow mounds.