MichelleI am a little behind on posting my experiences and will try to get caught up soon. This post is from early August 2021.
From Cooke City, MT I took the Beartooth Pass Scenic Byway to Red Lodge, MT and then drove on to Billings, MT for the night. My drive across Beartooth had barely started when I had to stop for road construction. A 30 minute wait! I was stopped next to a rocky area with lots of cracks and holes in the rocks. An adorable long tailed weasel poked his head up out of the rocks. He grew curious of the road construction sounds and was popping up here and there looking at what all the ruckus was about. I had a fun time watching the weasel antics which made that 30 minutes go by a lot faster!
Oh my goodness but this highway, once again, was fabulous. It starts out around 7700 feet and goes to almost 11,000 ft at the top of Beartooth Pass. That is well above treeline and is ‘cold and windy’ as the Arctic! It is so rare that one is able to access alpine lakes without having to backpack to them, but this highway takes you past many stunning alpine lakes. You will have to look at my pictures because it is so hard to describe. Everything is small except the rocks! Lots of rock outcroppings, then meadows, then lakes and so on. You drive up and up and up, doing switchback after switchback. This part was super narrow, no shoulders, and straight down. Very scary in an RV! Near the top you start to see patches of remaining snow and tundra-like landscape but mostly rocks since hardly anything will grow here. The season is too short! Once at the top you can see all of those switchbacks coming up the mountain, and in the distance mountain after mountain and lake after lake! Red Lodge is the town at the other end of the highway and is adorable like most of these tourist towns are. I stopped for lunch at the Red Lodge Cafe, walked around town and got back on the road.
After that the terrain turns to farmland for the most part. Coming into Billings the smoke was very bad! I think because it sits in a valley. I stayed only one night here (at Cracker Barrel), and the next day moved on to Miles City, MT. I stayed at a free campsite at Matthews Recreation Area on the Yellowstone River. It was so relaxing to walk along the river and look at the interesting rocks on the shore. Apparently you can find large agates here if you know what to look for, but I didn’t have the time to take it seriously. The camp hosts were most enjoyable and provided lots of useful information. As an example, the husband was an ex-policeman. As expected, he told me, that to be safe, I should never tell people I’m traveling alone. Although I understand and agree with what he is saying, I feel that being so overprotective of myself will keep me from talking to or meeting people the way I would like. That is in an open, friendly, honest way. I guess there is a balance of both that needs to be practiced. But this is something I struggle with.
The next day I drove on to Glendive, MT which was not very far from Miles City in mileage but was a far cry from Miles City in feel. ‘Dive’ is definitely the part of Glendive that I felt! I stopped here though to see Makoshika State Park which looked interesting on the internet. Luckily it proved true that it was a beautiful ‘badlands’ type of geography and quite beautiful. Lots of buttes and eroded hillsides that have created odd-shaped hoodoos. Multiple layers of different types of rock and minerals give the look of multi-colored stripes across the hills. I think it’s almost a better example of this type of geology than Teddy Roosevelt Natl Park (which I will talk about later), but on a much smaller scale. Originally I planned to stay 2 nights in Glendive, but since I was able to see the state park in an afternoon, I decided to move on the next day and finally arrive at the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt Natl Park outside of Watford City, North Dakota. Crossing into North Dakota you drive into Little Missouri National Grasslands. Low rolling hills covered with prairie grass for miles. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) this is the largest Grassland in the country at just over 1 million acres. It has it’s own beauty; maybe not majestic or spectacular, but wild and free. You can tell exactly where it ends (other than the sign) because you start seeing Oil Pumps all over the hills. You see a large field of hay with an oil pump in the middle of it. Somehow it just didn’t seem to fit. Watford City is a very depressing little town about 15 miles from the Natl Park. Mostly built around the oil production business, it had only the bare necessities to sustain a human being. Lots of Mobile Home parks, RV parks, and barracks all supporting housing for the Oil employees. This part of North Dakota is very bleak. BUT, they seriously had the best laundromat I’ve used so far! I did stay at a fabulous campground originally built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Core). It was uniquely named the CCC Campground! Go figure! It was not ‘in’ the Natl Park but from my campsite I could look across to it. This was a large campground and had only a fraction of spots taken by campers. Very quiet!
As far as this National Park goes, the North unit is very small (the road is 14 miles long) and not well set up. There were many beautiful spots but very few places to pull over and really look. The visitor center was a ‘portable’ with very little information. There were only a couple of hikes in the entire park. I am glad I was able to see it, but unless you have an annual parks pass I would not recommend going out of your way to see this unit of the park. I enjoyed the South unit much more.
Speaking of which, the South unit starts right in the town of Medora, North Dakota. Medora has embraced the Theodore Roosevelt theme and it’s amazing the activities and events they provide. All of the buildings are country/western/log cabin styles. Unfortunately many parts of Montana and North Dakota are having an extreme employee shortage (like lots of places) and restaurants or shops are closed. This was the case in Medora. About 50% of restaurants and shops were closed.
I really enjoyed this South unit of the park. It was very pretty with more green grasslands in between the ‘badlands’. The first thing you come to is a large Prairie Dog town. Farmers, of course, would consider them a nuisance, but tourists ‘love’ to watch and photograph their comings and goings. Including me! It is funny how you will see the same people at every overlook and pretty soon you say ‘hello’, then at the next overlook you might chat a little. Most people were looking for Bison and there were only 1 or 2 visible. It’s amazing how they can totally disappear like that. I happened to take a gravel side road and ‘there they were’, the Bison. A little further on ‘Wild Horses’! They were up on a hillside, so not close but fun to see. After traveling this road for about 30 mins, I got back on the main paved road and started back down to the entrance. Whoa Nellie! Those wild horses had moved down, right next to the road! Just standing around swishing tails at the flies! There was a young horse laying down with his Mama standing protectively over him. Great pics! This was a real treat!
Some of the striations in the ‘striped’ hills are black. This is from eons of plant material decomposing and being compressed. Eventually it turns into Coal! In some parts of this park there are very large Coal veins; and several of them are burning. One of the fires started when they were doing a controlled burn in the area. You can’t see flames, just smoke and burning coal smell. There are signs posted alerting tourists of the situation and asking that you not report the fires. I was doing a short walk out to an overlook when a Park Service ‘Fire’ guy came hiking by with a shovel. He was hiking out to a distant area to check on several of these Coal vein fires. Making sure they were still under control.
As I mentioned earlier, Medora has embraced the Theodore Roosevelt theme and has used that to entertain it’s tourists! There are several types of shows you can see. I had read about the Medora Musical. They have been doing this musical since 1965 I believe. It was so enjoyable! Very western in costume and songs, telling the story of how Medora came to be and T Roosevelt’s influence. It is held at the Burning Hills (outdoor) Amphitheater. This was quite the setup and very large. They even have an escalator to take you down to the Amphitheater since it’s built into the hillside. They had food vendors and a gift shop with very nice things. I was super impressed! And had a fabulous foot stomping time! If you are ever in Medora, North Dakota I urge you to see this show! You’ll come out grinning!
You’re such a great writer! I loved reading of these adventures! So fun!!