Technically, it's Theodore Roosevelt National Park, but when have I ever been known to be pedantic?
This was the big destination for North Dakota. Fargo was the big city, and Bismarck the capital, so both worth seeing, but the national park was the reason to visit the state at all. Teddy's a cool character, and it's fitting he have the only National Park named after a person. And after visiting, I can say: this is easily the most underrated National Park I've been to. It's not to the level of a Grand Canyon or Yosemite, but it's definitely on par with many of the Utah and Colorado parks that are such huge draws, and yet it seems no one knows about it.
We began the morning of the 30th in Bismarck, departing at a moderately early time and taking basically no stops before reaching the park boundary. Mix in another time change, and you've got us there shortly after 10am (but noon to our EST clocks).
The park is about 95% comprised of a scenic driving loop, but there is a separate overlook called the Painted Canyon, which we passed by on the way into Medora, where we were staying. So we figured we'd hop out and see that first.
You'll notice I'm kind of overdoing it on the panoramics. It's difficult to accurately portray just how vast this landscape is, even with them. We had a bit of a haze, as you see, which was due to some wildfires up in Canada, so sadly it was a haze that was here to stay. But the views still turned out alright.
We finished making our way into the town of Medora next, which is literally the gateway into the park proper (as in, the front gate is within the town). Again, it was still fairly early local time, but internally we felt like another meal, so we had a brunch at the Cowboy Cafe before venturing in to do the scenic loop.
The scenic loop is, by the way, a scenic out-and-back, since a 4-mile chunk is closed for repairs. I cannot seem to win at this. A coworker recently pointed out to me that the most prevalent theme of this blog is that I seem to always run into closures and cancellations when I go places. And recently, I can't argue that that seems to be true: Congaree's boardwalk was closed, Acadia's sunrise and sunset were foiled, the Sunsphere in Knoxville was closed for covid, as was Cuyahoga's famous train ride...incomplete visits do seem to follow me wherever I try to go. It's never completely debilitating to the trip, though, as with this closure: essentially nothing we hoped to see was blocked off by this. It just meant a more roundabout journey through the park.
We started with the visitor center, where we watched a brief informational video:
Then took off. Barely inside the park, traffic slowed to a standstill: an ill omen, as much of the park is a drive. But then we saw the reason:
Buffs! Blockin the road! Road Buffs!
They are clearly used to cars, as they were unfazed to the point of boredom by us passing.
We continued on, enjoying the roadside scenery until reaching the badlands overlook, which was also the furthest point prior to the road closure and the turn back:
See? Incredible landscape. Next, we went to Buck Hill, a very quick hike up to the park's second highest point:
From that vantage point, you could see that the landscape went on seemingly forever.
Boicourt Overlook was next, not a place we had picked out initially, but one that looked worthwhile as we passed by. It was indeed worthwhile:
The last area of any real hiking was Wind Canyon, which also took us by the Little Missouri River, which at the moment is more of a Little Missouri Sludge Pit:
Slightly further down the road was another chance encounter with wildlife:
A field of prairie dogs! They really do stand up like that! And burrow away when you get too close!
Last, an overlook near the entranceway to the park, the Skyline Vista:
Simply exquisite.
We returned to Medora to eat and sleep. The town has a purposefully-kitschy old west decor to it, but combined with the steep badland cliffs in the background, it actually kinda works:
Cool buffalo pic B)
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