Saturday, Sept. 26th, we
left Montana and arrived in Medora, ND about 1:00. (Red Trail Campground - $34 a night and they're closing this weekend! (so we're one of the last guests for 2015! Earl was so excited to find
the Gator game was being televised, as we have not found that anywhere on this
trip – I guess we’re just too far away, so that delayed our plans for a while
to go in and explore the town.
Haha. We have good internet so I
caught up on email and Facebook while he was watching the game. Way too close for comfort, but he was happy with a win! I love the framed piece above as this IS North Dakota! Wow, what a barren state with places of interest few and far between!
We decided late afternoon to go into
town and see what is fun to do in Medora.
Cute town, BUT almost everything is shut down for the winter!! Whaaaat? It’s 85 degrees today! We’re also beginning to have trouble finding
RV parks! Many shut down at the end of
Sept or at the latest Oct. 15, so we’re definitely going to have to head
south! From a business standpoint, it
makes no sense to me. Why wouldn’t you
determine that date according to the weather, rather than just the date
itself? Sometimes by the end of Sept.,
from what we’ve heard it can be bitter cold and even have snow, but right now,
they must be having Indian summer as it’s very warm. Yesterday was hot! At any rate, we found a taffy shop open (I
don’t even like taffy, haha, but it was fun to watch). It was fascinating, after they pull it on the
machines we’ve seen before, a guy was hand pulling it into a long “rope” and
then feeding it into this machine where it wrapped and twisted the paper around
it. Really cool! The girl was telling us this machine is 87
years old!!
We struck up a conversation with a
couple who are from Billings, Montana, and they had just come up for the day.
Super nice couple. It never fails to
surprise me that whenever we tell people what we’re doing, almost without
exception, they say, “Oh I hope we do that someday!” We tell them you have to just make it happen,
or it’ll always just be a dream. You have to just go for it!
We asked one of the clerks in one of
the few shops that were open, where was a great place to eat in town, and she
said, if you don’t mind driving a few miles out of town, there is a great guest
ranch that has a restaurant with fabulous food, in particular, famous for their
burgers. So we headed out and wondered
almost all the way to the actual entrance if we could have missed it…..a looooooong dirt road with a lot of free range cattle right beside the road!
And finally at the end we got to the
guest ranch….. talk about redneck city!
Haha
BUT what was fun was we were there just in time to see a wedding! First time I’ve ever seen bridesmaids in jean
skirts with tutu sewn onto the bottoms.
Haha All I can say is for this part of the country, it works!
All of them were in boots and the guys were dressed in jeans, with a tux jacket
(!), cowboy boots and hats! Very
cute! The bride and her mother came
right in where we were waiting for our food, and we congratulated the bride and
she was so friendly and welcomed us to stay, so we did! Have you ever seen a bride in a gorgeous dress
with a lovely train, the ribbon lacing up the back was turquoise and she had on
turquoise jewelry! I loved it (so much
for diamonds and pearls – haha).
The
guys had on turquoise ties and ALL the attendants, bridesmaids AND the bride
carried artificial flowers.
Seriously!!! The guests all sat
on hay bales! You can see from the
photos the setting was just in the middle of a field. Ha….
We felt right at home in our shorts and sandals. LOL
Seriously we wish them all the best!
We really weren’t very hungry so we
just shared a burger since that’s what they were famous for, and it really was
good!
After we left, on the way home, we
decided to go ahead and go through the Theodore Roosevelt National Park (that’s
why we’re here). We hadn’t intended to
go until tomorrow, and we may well decide to go back, but seeing it at night
with a beautiful sunset was great, AND lots of animals were out. Dozens of bison, many just right on the road
beside us! And beautiful long range views! These are the North Dakota Badlands.
We saw some animals I’m not really
sure about – possibly wolves or large fox (?) and hundreds and hundreds of prairie dogs. They are SO cute and funny. Little bitty chubby things that stand straight up but at the slightest movement or sound they'll scamper into their holes. There are huge prairies of them with hundred of the burrowed homes! I took a video of Earl getting out of the car and running in the field and they were just all over the place. I was laughing hysterically so I decided not to publish that. LOL But here's what the field looks like, and there are so many! As far as the eye can see!
Here's more of the park views...and note the gorgeous clouds.
We were in the park as the sun set....simply breathtaking!
Sunday, 9/27 - We slept in and then watched two more of Dr.
Jim Richard’s messages on the Apocalypse – anxious to read the book. I made us
a late breakfast and after a bit, we decided to go on over to the National Park
again, since the Visitor Center was closed yesterday and it was dusk, and
wanted to get some photos earlier in the day.
What a gorgeous day today! About 73 and sunny, perfect!
Inside the Visitor Center....
Good descriptions of The Badlands...
In the Visitor Center, we watched a very interesting movie about Theodore Roosevelt, especially when he was a young man and his early love of North Dakota, particularly The Badlands and after his first wife died in childbirth, broken hearted, he came to the isolation of The Badlands to spend time to just heal. Very moving story..... and here, from Rough Rider......to President.
This is quite a quote, isn't it?
This is interesting, as well....
And this is the actual shirt he was wearing with the bullet hole!
Inside the Visitor Center....
This is interesting, as well....
And this is the actual shirt he was wearing with the bullet hole!
We came across one area full of wild
horses. Beautiful!
Here's a video we took from the car. We were facing into the sun, so it's not the greatest quality, but we were so excited, we didn't care!
After the park, we decided we wanted
to get an ice cream cone, so went back to what is literally the only place open
in town, other than their 2 pump gas station!
It’s like they’ve rolled up the sidewalks here! We noticed the ice cream was pretty slim
pickings, with most places empty and only 4-5 flavors – we commented on it and
they said today is their last day! They
were closing at 5:00 and will remain closed until next spring! We asked why they didn’t go with the weather,
rather than the date? They just kind of
laughed and said the date usually works out , this year is just unusual. Last year at the end of September they’d
already had snow and it was in the 30’s!
Yikes, I’m glad we’re having nice weather still! I don’t like cold weather. We’re getting things all ready to leave again
in the morning, just have to get across North Dakota! There’s not much here, haha. Almost every one we’ve spoken with, when we
tell them we’re from Florida, they ask why in the world we came to North
Dakota? We tell them we’re going to
EVERY state, but some are awesome, some you just kind of have to get through! Actually we like The Badlands - so unusual! As we drove through town, here are some of the sights...
Is this not the strangest roof you've ever seen? I assume it's designed this way, and not just leaning. LOL Not sure what the architectural style would be?
Downtown Medora....
Earl, as usual had to get to the highest point around for his classic pose.
We had a bit more adventure there than we bargained for! Earl had checked on the satellite view and it appeared to have a large area to turn around, so we thought we'd be ok going up in the RV, even though it was at the top of a very large hill, and a narrow dirt road! Weeeellll, as soon as we got to the top, we knew immediately there was not room to turn the RV around without disconnecting the car! Even with that, it was a bit hairy! But after we ooed and ahhed over Sue, I fixed us a nice lunch and we sat outside with the incredible view and enjoyed our lunch.
While I was making lunch, Earl got the car disconnected, and after lunch, he jockeyed the RV around and whew, we made it! He drove on down to the bottom of the hill and I just followed in the car and we hooked up at the bottom. Relieved!
Then we arrived in Jamestown around 4:00, late for us, we usually like to get in by 2:00 but
with stopping to see Salem Sue and lunch and then realizing that we'd crossed back into central time (!) we realized it was 4:00 but he hurried to get the car unhooked so we could go into Jamestown and explore the town (there aren't that many places in ND - haha). And lo and behold, what did we find? The world's largest buffalo!!! Dakota Thunder - he weighs 60 tons and is 26 feet tall and 48 feet long! Now that's a big buffalo! He was built here in 1959 and could definitely use a little renovation - haha. He's a bit the worse for wear.
Again, judge the size by Earl standing below the buffalo.
This is actually a pretty little town, and famous for their Buffalo Museum and herd of buffalo in the adjacent pasture. So when we got there, we realized they were closed (we're getting used to this), and we found that they had moved the herd of buffalo on Saturday to their winter pastures! That really was of no concern to us, as we've seen a LOT of buffalo and bison on this trip!
We enjoyed strolling through the frontier type town area - almost everything was closed, but we're getting used to that. I assume it'll be locked up this weekend, but while no one was there, the doors were open and we could stroll in and look around.
The most interesting thing was the discovery that Louis L'Amour was born here in Jamestown! Earl has read many of his books and has always enjoyed his writings. They say here that Lewis and Clark pointed the way when they explored the western part of the country, and that Louis L'Amour followed with his frontier stories.
Downtown Jamestown is the site of a beautiful Catholic Church! I'd love to have seen inside!
On the road again tomorrow - and I'll get to add a new sticker to my USA map - Minnesota!
