F17: Travelling Through Teddy’s Park

Day 6: October 7

We had hoped for an early start, but the smear down the windshield that we thought was bird poop turned out to be raw egg! Were we egged? Or were we egg-dropped by a bird? The second, unbroken and very store-bought egg on the ground showed that we had been vandalized. A first.

After David’s amazing cleanup, we headed further west through Rugby, home of the Eagles Restaurant specializing in Broasted Chicken!

There are obviously no helmet laws here (I thought this guy looked like comedian Billy Connolly, whom I met once!):

In Towner, “The Cattle Capital of North Dakota”, the Gas station’s sign said “We have Cattle Vaccine”!

We headed south then west again on Highway 23 and right after we observed that we hadn’t seen an oil well yet, we saw our first in Makota. And the first of miles and miles of oil wells, large and small:

Along with the oil wells was also the change in the landscape. It had been flat for two days and now the hills began. Thankfully, we were able to escape the blight of oil wells on the scenery (for now anyway, if Trump and cronies have their ways on changing regulations about National Parks) and pulled into the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We got our annual pass, and I got my Parks Passport stamped (it’s been a year!).

The welcoming committee of the hills:

and the Buffalo greeted us:

We went straight to the Jasper Campground (Site 30, $7.00, No Services AT ALL), and I took a stroll and saw my Thanksgiving Turkeys:

Here’s the view of my chair:

Day 7: October 8

A gorgeous morning (and no eggs!). We headed out on the 14 mile scenic drive. We saw many Buffalo:

Bighorn Sheep (a chance sighting):

Mule Deer:

and some beautiful surroundings (I love Cottonwood trees):

At one lookout, we chatted with a New Yorker and fellow Newfoundland lover (in fact he and his spouse wrote a book called “This Marvellous and Terrible Place”). He is from New Zealand and his spouse is from Poland. He said their children were Kiwi Polish!

We decided to head to the South Unit of the park for the next couple of nights. We passed acres and acres of sunflowers (not so pretty; Vincent wouldn’t have painted these):

and St. Demetrius Ukrainian Catholic Church, in the middle of nowhere.

The Painted Canyon Visitors Centre yielded the view that we saw for the first time about 15  years ago:

And we saw our first Prairie Dogs of the trip:

Mandy saw them, too:

And so did a wily coyote:

We got to the Cottonwood Campground (#24, $7.00 No Services) and took a walk along the river:

Here’s the view from my chair (including horses in the distance):

Day 8: October 8

We got up early and had the best time to see the best sites on the scenic loop of the South Unit. We’ve had a few bird sightings: Ring-necked Pheasant, Eastern Bluebird, Wild Turkeys and several Hawks, none of which posed for photos.

It was a day of “bests”:

…Geological Formations (see the smiley face?):

…Lines of Animals:

…Mom and Baby:

In the last Prairie Dog Town in the park, this coyote came in, pooped in a animal hole then lay down beside another, seemingly ready for lunch. We moved on!

We decided to continue south towards Sturgis. After passing ANOTHER Ukrainian Catholic Church in the middle of nowhere (truly, the Lutherans rule here), we started to see a whole lot of nothing. The oil wells petered out and made way for equal opportunity ranches with crops, cattle sheep, some oil wells, more sunflower seeds, and bee hives!

Once we crossed into South Dakota (Mandy’s 26th state), things became more arid…and more vast. A whole lot of this:

led to this first view of the Black Hills:

We got to Sturgis, now mostly dead after the Rally and the summer bikers are gone, and checked into the Day’s End RV Park (#53, $13.25 Passport America, Full Services but they had just turned off the water since it may freeze tonight!).

Here’s the deer view from my chair:

A walk through the park showed the facilities for bikers during “the season”. Imagine every square inch of this empty beauty covered in Harleys and bikers!