After a refreshing night sleep, we headed out to the southern part of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The park was green and the badlands were beautiful, and dramatically less "bad" than a few miles away in Badlands National Park.
Though famous for animals, we only saw a couple of wild horses and a pair of coyotes early in the morning. Oh, and of course, more cute little Prairie Dogs. Catherine loves the fact that you can count on seeing them in the same spots every day. Maybe most critters were in hiding because it was damp and overcast.
We headed up Ridgeline Trail -- less than a mile through meadows teeming with wildflowers. Denise bought an identification guide, but we haven't keyed everything out yet. Here's the flower dump.
Neat bug.
Very common:
We looked at the views over the badlands and then headed back down the loop.
Of course, there were more flowers.
The next short trail (Coal Vein Trail) on the loop goes through scoria. In most places, scoria has volcanic origin, but around here it means was burned when the coal in the region caught fire and burned for years and years (like 20+). This area has been out for about 30-40 years. On the way up, we had to stop the car for Denise to take a mushroom picture.
After that detour, we started on the brick-like scoria trail.
Of course, there were more wildflowers.
And more recently burned areas.
Denise even spotted a pair of Lazuli Buntings.
Catherine was too busy taking wildflower photos.
At least Denise was pointing at one near the trail and not on some steep slope requiring Catherine to kneel awkwardly.
In fairness, Denise was taking flower photos too and these did have cool flies on them.
More flowers.
Denise got way ahead as Catherine waited for the wind to die down to take more flower photos.
Catherine thinks Denise was worried about bison -- we saw lots of evidence of their activity, though didn't run into any.
What was that? No bison. Well, get back in the car and we can fix that. This was was taking a dust bath. They looked grayer and less "molty" than the SD bison.
We stopped at another overlook.
There are bison dots in this one.
And, of course, more flowers.
We continued through the loop, seeing more bison (sometimes bulls alone or in small groups and sometimes whole herds with cows and calves) and some wild horses. These critters are easy to spot. Just watch for the cars stopped in the middle of the road.
We stopped at the Wind Canyon Trail to see a bend in the Little Missouri River. The river was quite lovely.
And the wind/water erosion caused all kinds of neat patterns and holes in the rocks.
All the brochures discuss the clay soil becoming slick when wet. We can now attest, that stuff gets slick as glass. Catherine highly recommends staying were it is flat and not taking the short cut down when it starts to rain. Yeah, 5 minute rain shower in the 10 minute hike. Oh well, neither of us are sweet enough to melt. And there were flowers on this trail too.
We drove to the picnic area near the campgrounds, but it was mostly closed due to flooding and the birds seem to have gone to higher ground to beg from humans. Since it wasn't late and we'd completed the driving loop in the southern part of the park, we decided to try the northern bit. Oh, Catherine actually reserved a room back near the southern part of the park so we wouldn't have to drive to Bismark while Denise checked out the visitor's center for magnets and baby books. When Catherine wandered in, the ranger asked if she was expecting twins (the other ranger on duty spent a while trying to explain that that wasn't the most tactful question to ask).
Remember that energy exploration bit we talked about? It caused hotel rooms to be scarce? Yeah, we ran into it again. Traffic on this road -- 85 -- a one lane in each direction North-South cut through was at least 50% 18 wheelers carrying all kinds of equipment. Mostly big cylindrical tanks. Instead of being virtually empty, it was full of this equipment. Road construction probably didn't help. In any case we saw more cow country, some oil wells and more traffic than expected.
When we saw badlands, we figured no one else wanted it, so it had to be National Park. We were correct. The northern part of the park maintains a herd of about 15 longhorn steers to give the historical feel of the place. They were a rainbow herd.
Across from the cows, we found a Northern Flicker. The drive through the park had plenty of scenic overlooks.
The little cabin was a CCC project, providing a shady overlook of the flooded river and bison dots below.
We thought about doing the trail at the end of the road. It had more wildflowers.
And was a nice walk through tick-infested prairie (yes we found a couple of ticks; they don't just live in Catherine's driveway).
But between the ticks, heat and buffalo tracks, Denise decided we could head back towards the river. We saw Bobolinks in the prairie.
A mushroom rock attracted Catherine's attention on the way back down.
Our river walk / birding event was interrupted by the presence of large quantities of very, very sticky mud.
They were still mucking out campgrounds and the ranger's cabins had sandbags around them. We saw an American Kestral with a snake that must have weighed as much as it did. How that bird got that snake off the ground, we'll never figure out.
We passed the cannonball formations on our way out.
If anyone is interested, the southern half the park is on Mountain Time and the northern half is on Central. This closes bathrooms early. We made our way back through the construction traffic and checked into the hotel.
After a quick dinner, we headed back to the park to see if anything came out at dusk. We saw more horses and three elk. Apparently porcupines are sometimes seen on the roads. Catherine believes that without a dog with a curious and sensitive nose, no one every finds one of those critters.
Such pretty landscape pics, and a great bison shot!
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