Wednesday, September 26
We arrived at Belfield, North Dakota yesterday afternoon and set up at Trappers Kettle campground. Good restaurant and Dairy Queen right next door! Now we're living! Only problem was, they were having problems with power in the area and half the place didn't have power which meant the restaurant wasn't serving much of anything. So we opted to eat at the DQ and reward ourselves with Blizzards! When in Rome!
Wednesday morning we headed for the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We would discover that this part of the park is pretty in its own way.
Love the colors in the sandstone with the accent of deep green trees as contrast. This is overlooking the Little Missouri river. Way down in the canyon on the sandbar is a herd of bison. The yellowing leaves added to the contrasting colors of the area. See? There they are! Bison. So many different shades and types of sand and dirt. Pretty cool! Okay, so we're driving along and there's a freakin' snake in the road. Is it alive? We paused long enough to find out that it was, indeed, alive and sunning himself. This one is a Plains Hognose Snake. Did we mention that this picture was taken from inside the truck? We don't do snakes! Bruce is only afraid of two kinds of snakes - live ones and dead ones - and here we came across two right in a row. Oh lucky day! This one was also out sunning himself and is a Yellow-bellied (Blue) Racer. Someone should tell these guys they're in the wrong place to be sunning! This is one view from the Oxbow Overlook at the end of the road. Check out the different formations in the sandstone. Amazing what Mother Nature does. Another shot at Oxbow of different formations. The Hognose had changed color and direction by the time we came back past him and had been granted the gift of life by all the vehicles traveling this section of road. He's a lucky guy! Obligatory photo of a bison, but this one is in TRNP not Yellowstone. There was a herd of about 20 grazing along the road as we drove by. Bison were reintroduced in 1956 and elk in 1985. That afternoon, we visited the South Unit of TRNP and enjoyed that place a lot more just because of the critters there. We entered via the Medora Visitors' Center, collected our stamp and walked through the Maltese Cross Ranch, which was interesting in itself. We're constantly amazed at the size of the people of that day. They were so much smaller in stature than we are today. Roosevelt's ranch house was very basic but served his purpose.
"Roosevelt first came to the badlands in September 1883. Before returning home to New York, he became interested in the cattle business and joined two other men as partners in the Maltese Cross Ranch."
Prairie Dogs greeted us and put on a show of chasing each other around. They're cute little varmints. We spotted some turkeys in the brush. Not very good pictures, but you get the idea. This part of the world is known as the Badlands of North Dakota. It's sure different from the Badlands of South Dakota, which appears to be a lot more arid and stark. There are so many colors here and shapes. About 60 million years ago, streams carried eroded materials eastward from the young Rocky Mountains and deposited them on a vast low-land - today's Great Plains. During the warm, rainy periods that followed, dense vegetation grew, fell into swampy areas and was later buried by new layers of sediments. Eventually this plant material turned into lignite coal. Some plant life became petrified. Today considerable amounts of petrified wood are exposed in the badlands. Bentonite, the blue-gray layer of clay, may be traced to ash from ancient volcanoes far to the west. But even as sediments were being deposited, streams were starting to cut down through the soft strata and to sculpt the infinite variety of buttes, table lands, and valleys that make up the badlands we know today."
The main reason we went to TRNP was to see wild horses, and we did! We saw 24 in all.
The first herd we came upon consisted of 14 horses. Woo hoo! They were in much better shape than we envisioned. Somehow, we thought they would be wild and wooly looking, but their coats were in good shape and they looked fat and sassy. Most of this band had pretty heads and were pretty refined in appearance with decent conformation. Posing for the camera. The Appaloosa blood surprised us. Lots of spots and roaning in this band. One of the younger stallions we presumed. Maybe a two-year-old? Wonder at what age he'll be extricated from the herd by the lead stallion. That is one pregnant mare! Wrong time of the year? Interesting. This one was really curious about us, but not curious to come much closer. Mom nuzzling her foal. Precious moment. We figured this guy was the boss hog. He had that swagger that goes with owning the territory. It was fun watching him scratch his legs and chest on this branch. We thought for sure he'd walk over it and scratch his belly, but he didn't. Bruce really liked this little guy. He'll be something else in a couple of years as a three- or four-year-old. We left the horses and went to explore the remainder of the park.
This doe had three fawns. Whattayathink? Bad winter coming on or lots of food and no predators? Smile for the camera! As we drove around the park, we saw two more horses by themselves in the brush and found another band of four napping happily. We couldn't help but be curious about the small number of foals. Had they already been rounded up and sold at auction or was there another reason we wondered. We only saw two of this year's foals.
The stallion of this bunch (he's the one on the right) looked more like what we were expecting. His neck was crested, and he was pretty chunky like the old-fashioned horses. He was not too happy about someone approaching to take a picture either. The scars on his body told of challenges he had offered to anything or anyone who came too close to his group.
Strange formations again in the sand. It looked like a bunch of mushrooms. There was a little cottontail bunny hopping up the hill, but he was too far away to get a good picture. Another herd of four horses appeared at the edge of the park as we were leaving. Now Geri can cross that off her list of "gotta see before she dies" things. The Northern Lights in person is the only remaining "gotta see" for her.
Next stop: Voyageurs National Park
