July 19, 2014

Medora, North Dakota

THE DAKOTA BADLANDS

There is not much in Medora.  It is a small, quaint little community - one of those, "Don't blink or you'll miss it" type of towns.  Still, it is obvious that the people here are proud of their town and do everything possible to make tourist like us comfortable.

What is here that I have longed to see are the Dakota Badlands.  They are majestic, different and speak of history at every mountain, mineral formation and grassland.

We started our tour of the Badlands by entering Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  The "loop" through the park is about 36 miles - much less than we encountered in Yellowstone.  The scenery is breathtaking.  There is nothing on the east coast to compare to this. 

While we have previously encountered Buffalo, or Bison, in South Dakota and Wyoming, it was still exciting to come across a heard of the huge animals in this park.  But, perhaps one of the most interesting animals we encountered were the little Prairie Dogs.  There were thousands of these little critters either playing, standing outside their underground burrows or digging new holes.  It is hard to believe how dangerous the underground homes were (are) to horses that could easily drop a hoof into a hole and come up lame.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park is also home to wild horses.  They live, breed and gallantly run across the plains unencumbered by man or his saddle.  I was told that they are occasionally checked by a Veterinarian to be sure they remain healthy and disease free.

Nancy, Margaret and I decided to visit the "Petrified Forest" in the park.  Here you can see the fossil remains of trees that stood tall and mighty some 58 million years ago.  This entire area was formed by volcanoes, ice sheets, rain and wind.  The softer rocks quickly dissolved away from the more dense material leaving behind some pretty strange looking formations.  Anyway, to get to the petrified forest we had to drive 7 miles down a red dirt road and then hike another 1-1/2 mile through the Badlands.  The red dust from the road billowed up in huge clouds and penetrated every crack and crevasse on the truck.  Poop from wandering cattle and Buffalo along the road splattered up under the fenders coating the rear flaps with the grassy mess.   Fortunately, I was able to wash much of the dust off today thanks to a kind manager at the campground.  Vehicle washing is not normally allowed.

Torbin and Patty joined our caravan yesterday - we now have four Cedar Creek's heading for FROG.  Skip and Susan should join us when we reach Superior.

Tonight all four of us (couples) are going to the Medora Musical, billed as a fantastic outdoor on-stage show and an event called the "Pitchfork Fondue" where steaks are put onto the prongs of a pitchfork and roasted over a bed of hot coals.  It will be interesting to see just how this works out.

I will share some photos and comments about this event the next time I have a chance to add to the blog.

Tomorrow we leave Medora and head completely across North Dakota to Barnesville, just east of Fargo.  Barnesville is actually just a overnight stopping place.

For those that asked, Oscar is doing just fine.  He constantly enjoys exploring the new smells found at each campground or stopping place.  Nancy gave him a bath today and the red dirt just rolled off discoloring the water in the bottom of the shower.  He is not too keen of baths but we now have a nice clean puppy.  I hope he can stay that way for at least a few days.

 Majestic view of the Badlands from the truck.

 Badlands view.

 Our campground

 

  Strange Rock Formations.

Wild Horses in the Park

Buffalo Herd

58 Million year old petrified tree stump.

Yes, I know.  I am two days behind again.  Problems with poor Internet connections and being tired are the culprits.  We are in Miles City, MT heading for Medora, ND.  I will do my best to get caught up.

JULY 15, 2014

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

WYOMING

We left Cody at 8 :00 a.m. and began our drive through Buffalo Bill State Park to the east entrance going into Yellowstone.  The drive to the entrance took an hour so we did not get into the park until around 9 :00 a.m.

 If you look at the map at the end of the text you will see our route highlighted in red.  This route took us across Sylvan Pass at an elevation of 8,530 feet.  This took us around the beautiful shoreline of Sylvan Lake accented by even higher mountain peaks still covered with snow.  The temperature was in the upper 60's when we stopped to make some pictures at the lake.

A little further down the road we began skirting the shoreline of  Yellowstone  Lake.  This is a huge lake with a surface elevation of 7,733 feet.  Parts of the lake are more than 400 feet deep.   This lake makes Lake Anna look like a farm pond.  We intersected with the road making the lower loop of the park at  Fishing  Bridge. There is a huge RV park here that has full hook-up sites that can be reserved.  I think that this is where we will try to get a campsite if we ever come back to Yellowstone.  We continued to follow the road next to the lake shoreline to the West Thumb Geyser Basin where we began to see clouds of steam rising just like the forest was on fire.  Speaking of fire, we observed huge areas that were burned by a fire several years ago.  All of the standing trees were dead giving the appearance of toothpicks dotting a sea of new green vegetation.  The fire must have been massive.

 We went through Craig Pass at an elevation of 8,262 feet and crossed the Continental  Divide.  We stopped at the Visitor Center for Old Faithful.   We parked in a lot for  RV's and noticed the Oscar Mayer Weiner Mobile a few spaces away.   I have no idea why it was there but it made an excellent photo opportunity for Me, Nancy and Oscar.

 It was a fairly long walk to the area where Old Faithful is located.  We arrived at around 12:30 p.m. and noted the next expected eruption was 1:32 p.m.  We spent some time walking around Old Faithful and looking at some of the smaller geysers.  That was when the sky's opened up and it started pouring rain.  Along with several hundred other people we made a mad dash for the Visitor Center.  By this time the temperature was in the 50's.  The gift shop was packed with people dressed in shorts and T-shirts buying jackets and sweatshirts.  I was glad we had the foresight to bring our own jackets.

It was still raining when time for Old Faithful's eruption arrived.  I found a spot in front of a window in the visitor center where I could make photos.  I wasn't really all that impressed.  In fact it was sort of a letdown.  The place was too "Disney" and lacked the atmosphere of the non-commercialized parts of the Park.  Like Disney, there were more people in the crowd that spoke a language other than English.

We left Old Faithful and meandered around at least a half-dozen geyser basins.  The area is surreal with all the bubbling cauldrons, steam vents, mud pots and geysers.  You stop and think, "I am standing on top of a volcano".  It is really a strange feeling.

Our next big stop was Canyon Village.  There you can view the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  The canyon is some 22 miles long and 400 feet deep.  The Yellowstone River runs at the bottom of the canyon which includes two massive waterfalls.  There are overlooks at the top of the canyon and trails that go down into the canyon.  We were so tired of walking that we elected to stay on top and visit the overlooks on the north rim.

We drove back down stopping at the Mud Volcano and Sulphur Caldron before back-tracking from Fishing Bridge to Cody.  All total we spent 14 hours on our trip into Yellowstone.  We saw a lot but still missed even more.  I feel like we could spend at least a full day at the canyon.  We did not take the upper loop to Mammoth Hot Springs or Tower-Roosevelt.  I guess they will have to wait for the next visit to Yellowstone.

The opportunity to visit the park was extremely exciting.  It is a beautiful place with many wonders.  The photos below are only a small sample of over 200 that we took.

 

We encountered Bison, Mule Deer, Elk and Black Bear in the park.  Note the pretty yellow flowers and the backdrop of burned forest and dead trees.

Perhaps the best photo of them all?

Sylvan Lake.  Yes, that is SNOW on the mountains in the background.

 We are following a tour buss heading toward Sylvan Pass.  This gives you an idea of the mountains we had to cross.

 We encountered many geyser fields along our route.  The clouds of rising steam make it look like there was a fire.

 We finally made it to Old Faithful.  The crowds were thick and it began raining.  The temperature dropped into the low 50's.

Certainly not the best picture of Old Faithful.  The rain and crowds kept me from getting a better pic.

 We encountered scores of hot pools along our route.  The water in this one was crystal clear and the cavern descended out of sight.  The blue color is from copper deposits.

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  I shot this photo from a south rim overlook.  The stream at the bottom is really the Yellowstone River.

This is the best shot I could get of the first waterfall on the Yellowstone River going into the canyon.  We could easily spend two days here exploring the catwalks down into the canyon and visiting both the North and South rim.

CODY WYOMING

JULY 13, 2014

I thought we might sleep in late this morning, but both of us were up and wide awake at 7 a.m.  Nancy kindly fixed my breakfast of French Toast and fresh peaches with blueberries.

I had received permission from the park manager to wash the South Dakota mud off of the camper and truck.  My electric pressure washer was packed away in the big aluminum box on the back of the truck. After hooking up the pressure washer I began to try and blast the mud off.  But, it didn't want to come off!  Apparently it was mixed with some old pavement and maybe even some cement.  It had hardened like a rock and actually had to be scraped and chipped off.  This took all morning and left me soaking wet and covered with mud.

Nancy had gone to Wal-Mart with Lea and returned about the time I was cleaning up.

A quick shower, sandwich and change of clothes put us back on the road heading to the Buffalo Bill State Park.  The landscape was amazing - as you can see from the photos.  More mountains, gorges with roaring rapids, a beautiful mountain lake, unique land forms and pastoral farmland.  We had to drive through three tunnels on route 16.  Each tunnel had been carved out of the solid rock with minimal structural support.  They looked like something one would build as a part of a model train railroad.  We crossed a bridge at the back of the lake and drove maybe 15 miles on a back road.  There were some beautiful homes on the hillsides but they were far and few between.  I think it is important to keep in mind that Wyoming has a population of only 563,626 people yet it covers 98,000 square miles.  The majority of population live in or around the cities and towns like Cody, Jasper, Buffalo and Gillette.  Compare this to the six million plus people in Virginia.

We all got together for another community picnic dinner under our RV awning on beautiful green grass.

It is late and once again time for bed.  Tomorrow we leave early for a trip into Yellowstone National Park.  That will be at least an 8 hour day with over 200 miles of highway and park roads.