The road north from the south unit of the park was through grassland just outside the Little Missouri National Grasslands. We are approaching North Dakota oil country that we have heard about on the news. There are all kinds of little villages of portable living units, some small wooden structures and some trailers. There are oil wells or derricks all over the place as well as tank trucks and pickups that have various machinery logos on the sides.
We reached the entrance to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park mid-morning. This section of park consists of just one fourteen mile long road with the campground about five miles in. Before reaching the campground, we stopped at two pullouts. The first one talked about the longhorn cattle that used to roam the range around here. The park has a small herd that they keep so people can get the feel of what it was like in Roosevelt's time but they weren't out where we could see them.
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| Click to Read |
This section of the park is much more dramatic than the southern unit. The plateau and thus the badlands are higher with much more pronounced layers. The next turnout was called the slump formation. Huge sections of the cliffs had sheared off in one piece and you could match the layers in the lower mounds to those at the top of the ridge.
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| Just Before Entering the Park |
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| Match the Layers of the Slump Formation |
We arrived at the visitors' center which was really just a small building with a few items for kids to touch like a longhorn horn or a pelt and a small gift shop. We chatted with the ranger who said he retired from the California State Park Service. We drove on to where you get the envelope to self register but we didn't get out. Standing right next to the kiosk were two huge buffalo. We sat and watched them grazing on the grass for awhile and decided to find a campsite and come back to register. The campground loop is around a central lawn area and the two buffalo stayed there all day either grazing or lying down. It was more than a little unnerving to unhook the car that close to where they were but we managed. Once in the motor home and opened up, it was really neat to sit back and be able to watch them out the window. I took way too many pictures but couldn't believe we were actually as close to buffalo as we were.
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| Next to the Registration Kiosk |
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| Scratching Himself |
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| Taken from Motor Home Window - They Came Closer |
We got our act together and set out to explore the rest of the park. It looked like it would rain so we wanted to do what we could before that happened. Right at the entrance to the visitors' center there was a strange looking outcropping. At the bottom of the outcropping were several round rocks, some quite large and some fairly small. They are called concretions or mineral deposits around a core that form inside rocks like shale, clay and sandstone.
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| Concretions |
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| Really Large Concretion |
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| More Concretions |
The road passes the area where they used to drive cattle to the Long X Ranch and then switch backs up to the top of the plateau where you can look down at the Little Missouri River as it meanders through the cottonwoods and changes direction from north to east. We walked out to a point where there is a CCC picnic shelter and stood in awe of the landscape the river has carved.
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| Path of Original Trail Drives |
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| The Cottonwoods Follow the River |
The top of the plateau is gently rolling and grass covered. It is difficult to describe how far you can see and how majestic it all is. On one side are eroded canyons that drop steeply down to the river elevation while on the other side you can probably see fifty miles in the distance.
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| On a Clear Day, You Can See Forever |
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| From Prairie to Canyon to River |
We stopped to watch a herd of bison and saw another herd on our way back to the campground.
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| First Herd of Bison |
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| Second, Smaller Herd of Bison |
When we got to the last stop, we saw a guy from one of the oil pickup trucks walking back to the truck with a huge "buffalo chip". Then we heard someone yell "There are paper towels in the back" and another yell, "Get that out of here, it stinks!". I guess it wasn't as dry as he thought it was. It's a crime to remove anything from a national park. We guessed he had paid the price as we laughed out loud.
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| You Have to be Careful Where You Step - Or What You Pick Up |
Once we returned to the campground, we puttered around the rest of the afternoon, not daring to wander far as our friendly neighborhood bison were always nearby. Early evening, we drove back toward the park entrance to see if we could see any longhorns. They were out in the field so we could watch them through binoculars but the pictures do not show any long horns.
For more photos, see:
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