Theodore Roosevelt National Park & Devils Tower National Monument

Tuesday July 4, 2006

Right around Noon today I was eating a Sloppy Joe in Medora, ND. Where? Exactly. Eating what? Exactly. So how did I get to this place in my life? That’s a question that would require some serious counseling, which might not be a bad idea. But for now I’ll just talk about our day.

We were exhausted last night when we got to the motel, but I had trouble falling asleep. After a long drive, or a day that’s filled with lots of events, I always feel the need to unwind and decompress before I fall asleep. But last night was almost straight to bed, so I tossed and turned quite a bit. We were up around 7:15 am today (Happy Birthday America!) and were on the road to Teddy Roosevelt National Park. Teddy Roosevelt is really small, but compact and very pretty. It’s separated into 2 units, a North Unit (which we drove by yesterday around 8:00 pm but didn’t have time to stop) and a South Unit about 50 miles away. Teddy Roosevelt is in a Badlands area, named that by the Native Americans since they felt the land was of no use for farming, living, or anything else I suppose. The area was pretty much overlooked by most early settlers (as were the South Dakota badlands), but Teddy Roosevelt did some ranching in the area and found it quite beautiful. Since he was responsible for signing into law the Antiquities Act, which basically allowed for the preservation and protection of lands and areas that were beneficial and special places, he is considered one of the leaders of the National Park System movement, and thus was given the honor of having a park named after him.

We were only going to be able to see the South Unit, and we stopped first at the Painted Canyon area, a small overlook right outside the park. The main entrance was about 10 miles down the road and has most of the main trails and roads. The park is known for 2 animals: bison and prairie dogs. While we only saw a few bison during our short stay, the prairie dog towns were everywhere. These guys are considered a nuicance in many plains areas, where farmers feel they create havoc with the land. I personally think they’re kind of cute, and they make really interesting chirping noises in order to “talk” with each other. We also saw a lot of cottontail rabbits along the road and trails. We drove to the Jones Creek trailhead and took a short hike into the badlands of the park. Along the way we took an off-trail detour to the top of a small hill to get a better look of the area. The park is really quite striking, even though it has low rolling hills and lazy creek beds. It’s unassuming without trying to be gaudy, and to me looked a lot like Middle Earth. (And I say this as a non-Lord of the Rings geek.) After about an hour we turned around and made our way back to the car, getting buzzed by a hawk along the way who, I think, was worried we were trying to get to her nest.

After Jones Creek we stopped at a couple of short hikes, Wind Canyon and Buck Hill, both which gave good views of the Little Missouri River and the canyons it formed. At one point we came across a HUGE bison in the road. We pulled off to give it room, and it simply sauntered right down the middle of the road right past us. I was a little scared that he might try to ram the car (and I don’t think the car would have won), but thankfully he just moseyed on down the road.

We stopped right outside the park in Medora for lunch. Medora is a very small town, but it seemed really crowded. We decided to have lunch at a counter, where I made the aforementioned choice of Sloppy Joe for my lunch. Was it made out of beef, bison, elk, or some other mystery meat? One never knows. Needless to say, both Sage and I wished we had chosen somewhere else. We were on the road shortly after noon for the 4 ½ hour drive to Devil’s Tower. Again we had to take almost entirely back roads to get there, and along the way we saw a ton of pronghorn antelope. For some reason I didn’t think we’d see this many out here, but I guess it’s just like the song says: where the deer and the antelope play. So as we were looking at the road atlas for the trip to the tower we noticed there was a notation on the map, right next to the road we were driving on, that said “Geographic Center of the U.S. Marker”. This was a must stop in my book, especially considering we decided not to detour to the Four Corners monument when we were in Colorado and Utah earlier. So we’re driving down the road, we know we’re close, and I see a small fence at the top of a hill to my left. I figured that must be it, but I don’t see any signs about it on the road. After a few seconds we pass by a small road on the left that is closed with a gate and a big sign that says, “Road Closed”. We kept driving, thinking maybe that was something else, but then realized after a while that was it. So for some reason, the Center of the U.S. is closed. Once I get internet access again I have to dig into this…I was quite upset that this piece of roadside Americana is off limits, and I want to know the reason why. I might even write a letter to Babs Mikulski – if anyone can get to the bottom of this, she can.

We got to Devil’s Tower a bit before 5:00 pm and right away I came off none too impressed. I mean, it’s really cool, and I like how you can see it driving up from about 15 miles away. But for some reason I thought it would be bigger than it is. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s not tiny by any means.) And of course it was overrun with yahoos, which I expected, especially on July 4. But the weird part was that most of the people there were just sitting around, doing nothing. We read some info about what festivities were to be planned at the Tower for the 4th, and nothing special was going on that would make sense why people would just be sitting around, so I don’t know what they were doing. We took the 1.3 mile hike that goes around the tower, and after a while it sort of loses its charm. We saw some folks rock climbing, which is very popular at Devils Tower. It’s also interesting that it definitely looks more slanted on one side than another. It’s usually photographed from the West, where it looks almost straight up and down. But from the other side it has a noticeable slant. After staring up at it for half an hour I got an uncontrollable urge to eat mashed potatoes, and ended up writing down these couplets:

Giant Ants Flee From Citronella,
But Climbers Aren’t As Envious

After leaving Devils Tower we drove from Wyoming for about 2 ½ hours to Custer, SD, right in the middle of the Black Hills. We checked in to our motel about 7:45 pm, then found a pub and grill to have dinner in. Since we were on the eastern edge of the Mountain Time zone it was getting dark kind of early, right around 9:00 pm or so. We got back to our hotel where I was more than happy that ESPN replayed the Italy/Germany game from earlier, while Sage was kind of happy that she could watch the town’s fireworks from the hotel balcony.

Speaking of the fireworks (which went on for about 45 minutes), I have to say that July 4th in the states is really a non-holiday. We saw hardly anyone with US flags flying, and except for the fireworks and 1 woman who wished me a happy 4th, you’d hardly even know what day it was. In Banff on Canada Day EVERYONE seemed to have Canadian flags on them, were wearing Canadian shirts, and everyone was in to it. At the Banff Gondola and on Main Street they gave away Canada Flags to everyone, people had rub-on tattoos of maple leafs, and everyone was so proud to show their patriotism. It’s kind of sad that the US mentality is more about complaining that we don’t get Monday off than it is showing any sort of national pride.