Monday, October 14
Another slow start to the day. We were both up by 7:30 and worked on finishing up our respective journal entries. We usually take turns every other day because this journaling thing is a bit intensive and takes a lot of thought, time and effort so we share in creating them. We had some yogurt and bacon for breakfast. Our intention for the day is to return to the South Unit of the park, which is only about 30 minutes away and stop and do little short hikes at various stopping points along the scenic drive.
Once we both are dressed and ready for the day, we hop in the car and head towards the Park Entrance, which is in Medora. Believe it or not, we get distracted while driving through Medora by one of the small shops there that we just saw a woman enter and thought was open, so we parked to go in. Kathi has been saying that she wants a new pair of pajama pants with animals on them. At one time she had a couple of pair that she remembers buying at a National Park visitor center/gift shop, but we thought she might be able to find a pair at one of the gift shops here in town. When we went to enter the shop we found that the door was locked. The woman inside came to the door and told us the shop was closed but she said we could come in and browse if we wanted to. She was the owner of the shop and was there to do a little bit of work. We found no animal print pajama pants but we did find some nice warm sweat pants that say “North Dakota” down one leg and both decided that we could use a pair of these. This shop, called “The Hitching Post” is pretty big and has a fairly large assortment of souvenir type items. While browsing, I came across some Car Bingo cards. Oh my gosh!! I remember playing this in the car with my brother whenever we traveled long distances in the car but I have not seen any in ages! I bought some for the grandkids. Beckett is old enough to to play, but Margo and Theo aren’t quite there yet, but it won’t be long. I got one version that was for state license plates, and one version that was just spotting common things on the road (interstate signs, trucks, that kind of thing). Kathi decided to get one for Amara, too. After having luck at this shop and having NOT explored Medora we decided to drive around the cute little town and see what else we might find. There were a couple of other shops open and I bought Margo and Theo each a pair of pajamas in one and we found an open coffee shop where I got a chocolate- chocolate chip muffin and we each got a cup of coffee. The K-cup coffee in the Airbnb is absolutely dreadful so this coffee was quite a treat!
Medora truly is a cute little town that looks like it would be a great place to bring a family in the summer months. Along with the Medora Musical, for which the town is famous, there is a great-looking park with climbing structures that are labeled like an old western town. There’s a “bank” and a “jail” along with a “stagecoach” and “train engine”. It looks like a park that kids would LOVE! There is also a community pool that is a lazy river pool and is modeled after the Little Missouri River, which is the river that runs through Theodore Roosevelt National Park. If my kids were still little, I would be tempted to bring them here for a vacation!
Having explored just about everything that was open in town, we entered the park and stepped into the visitor center. When we were here on Saturday, we arrived late in the day and were not able to watch the movie that they run every thirty minutes, so we watched it today. We learned what a forward-thinking person Teddy Roosevelt was in regards to protecting and saving the environment and natural resources. He was born in Manhattan, but fell in love with the Dakota territory when he made a trip there to hunt bison. He became a cattle rancher near Medora and would shuttle back and forth between the ranch and his home in New York.
While waiting for the next showtime we wandered the exhibit about Roosevelt’s life that is also in the visitor center. I had left my coffee in the car and decided to go back out and get it before it got cold and on my way out to the car, I spotted a Black man that was buying an entrance ticket to the park and I ran back to let Kathi know. The reason I mention this is because we often keep count of how many persons of color we see when we are on these trips. Many times, Kathi is the only one. This man was only the third Black person spotted on this trip. The first two were at the car wash we went through on Friday.
After watching the movie, we went back to the car to make the drive through the park. We didn’t make it all the way to the end of the scenic drive when here on Saturday, so that was our goal today. I had read this morning that once at the end, that it was possible to hike to the Old East Entrance to the park and we decided that we would do that, then stop for other small hikes as we made our way back out of the park.
Once again we were blessed with seeing lots of wildlife. In the distance I spotted a herd of pronghorn antelope, then later we rounded the corner and off to the side of the road was a pretty large herd of bison (Kathi counted 48!). We sat and watched them for a while because they are such fascinating creatures. A couple of them were sparring. It didn’t look too serious but they were at it for a while. We also saw a number of mule deer along the way.
We reached the end of the road, parked and made the walk through a large prairie dog town to the Old East Entrance where a bit of fence and the guard building still sit. The prairie dogs barked and chirped at us the entire way and they ran around and dove into their holes. Fortunately that was as aggressive as they got. They really are pretty cute little critters!
We then walked back to the car and had a sort of picnic in the car and realized that we were losing daylight fairly quickly. This meant no short little hikes on the way out, but we did have another beautiful sunset.
We made our way back to Belfield with a stop for gas since tomorrow we travel to Fargo for the remainder of the trip. My train leaves from there at 4am Thursday morning, so we decided to make that drive a couple of days early rather than driving through the night and explore Fargo a bit.
Once back in our home away from home, we settled in to watch the last available episode of “Murder in a Small Town”, which, while better than “The Regime”, it is still just kind of “meh”. We were still pretty wide awake and searched for another show to watch and we decided on “Mare of Easttown”, which also stars Kate Winslet. This show proved to be a winner for us and we stayed up until around 2am watching the first 3 episodes!! Knowing we had to pack and make the 4 1/2 drive across the state tomorrow, we called it a night and went to bed.
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