Oh, Give Me a Home Where the Bison Roam

It's a shame North Dakota doesn't have a better reputation as a travel destination because folks are missing out.  I'll sum it up my feelings on the topic - eastern Montana is overrated and North Dakota is underrated. 

Years ago, my friend Peter visited me from Germany.  He likes camping, hiking and the great outdoors, so we decided that we'd take a road trip out West and visit states and national parks neither of us had ever seen.  I planned a loop that would take us westward from St. Paul to Glacier National Park, southeast to Yellowstone and then east through the Badlands of South Dakota back to St. Paul.  The problem was that Glacier is a two-day's drive from St. Paul, so I asked a friend who's from Dickinson, North Dakota what she recommend in her home state, and she answered Teddy Roosevelt National Park.  It was conveniently halfway between St. Paul and Glacier.

What was meant just to be a stopover before we made it to our intended destination ended up finding a piece of my heart.  North Dakota, of all places.   It was so special to finally go back with my family. because on that first trip with Peter, we talked about out futures, he with his then girlfriend who would become his wife, and I, with Chris.  We talked about how we looked forward to taking a road trip like this with our own families someday.  There's no way I could have imagined that Chris and I would someday travel back to Teddy Roosevelt with our four children and an au pair to boot.  

Day 1: Drive to North Dakota - We had packed as much as we could the night before and then woke up at 5:00 a.m. to make breakfast for the road, fill the cooler and rouse the kids from their beds.  We were on the road at 6:30 a.m., a half an hour behind schedule.  We had eight hours of driving ahead of us.

Before I make this trip out to be the best we could have imagined, I'll be honest with you.  There was a lot of whining and fighting in the car.  Chris and I had planned to split the driving, but he ended up in the back managing the kids for much of the trip, because he's the more patient one, and I ended up driving most of the way.

We had also planned to hold out as long as we could before popping a movie into the DVD player, because once the kids tired of watching movies, we would have had no more cards left in our back pockets.  I don't think we made it to St. Cloud before we gave in.   Unfortunately, one kid was terrified of an opening scene in A Bug's Life, another kid (who shall remain nameless) taunted his sibling over his fear and the other two couldn't follow the plot line and quickly lost interest in the movie.  We were nowhere near the border with North Dakota and I didn't think we were going to make it.

I also underestimated how much we would need to stop.  If we stopped for gas, we tried getting the kids to use the restroom, but let's just say, public restrooms aren't their thing.  One is terrified of the automatic hand dryers, one insisted that anywhere else was a better place to relieve himself that an actual toilet, so a bush behind the public restroom building got some extra watering and another has a bladder of steel and if he isn't about to burst, why bother going? So we'd pile back in the car and make it 10 miles down the highway and one of kids would announce a need to use the restroom. Sigh.

A friend who has taken road trips with her kids suggested we eat meals in the car because it gives the kids something to do and then when you make a stop, the kids can run around and burn off steam.  I had been feeling pretty proud of myself as I doled out homemade egg sandwiches for breakfast, but by the time lunchtime arrived, I realized that we had so tightly packed the car that we could reach the cooler.

I'm just happy we found room for the kids amidst the luggage!

So we made lots of stops.  To eat, to go to the bathroom, to fill up with gas, to buy more coloring books, to see a giant fiberglass cow and to play at the playgrounds we found on the Playground Buddy app.  (A shout-out to Mapleton Elementary in Mapleton, North Dakota for letting us use your playground even though your kids were having recess and for letting us use your bathroom, which thankfully did not have an automatic hand dryer.)

"Salem Sue" on the outskirts of New Salem, North Dakota

We continued westward and 10 and a half hours after we started, we finally rolled into Medora.  The formula that Chris and I go by - add 15 minutes to every hour of scheduled driving time - was a little off due to the longer-than-expected-stop to see Salem Sue, but there was a little surprise for us in Medora.  We looked at the clocks inside our rental house and realized we were on Mountain Time and had "gained" an hour. Ultimately, getting up so early had worked out well for us.  We arrived before dinnertime with enough time to unpack, cook dinner and sit down together for a warm meal. 

Chris was relieved to see s robust sunflower crop. 

Day 2: South Unit - Our first stop was the visitors center, where we checked out two Family Fun Packs that included field guides and binoculars from the visitor center and then set out on the 36-mile loop through the South Unit.  The accessibility of the park is one of things I love about it.  The drive was manageable to do in a day and offered plenty of opportunities to enjoy the park no matter what your skill level is.  Because of the age of our kids, we stuck to the scenic overlooks and short walks.  The walk up Buck Hill was doable with the kids and the views from the top were incredible.  We saw tons of prairie dogs, a coyote stalking prairie dogs and a loan bison here and there.

Chris finally got to see why I suggested we come to Teddy Roosevelt National Park.  It's beautiful!  

After dinner, while Chris put the kids to bed, Celina and drove part of the loop again in hopes that we'd have better chances of animal sightings at dusk.  We were in luck!  We saw a small herd of bison on the side of the road.  Celina was so excited that we spotted some, until a bison started walking towards our car.  She couldn't roll up the window fast enough! 

Day 3: Horse-back riding, Painted Canyon and an evening hike - Celina grew up around horses and is an expert rider, so I took her on a trail ride so she could experience horseback riding in the wild West. We may have been in the wild West, but our horses were pretty tame.  Where they lacked speed, they made up for in dexterity though.  As we climbed the switchbacks to take us to the top of the ridge overlooking Medora, I was amazed that such big animals could navigate steep slopes while carrying people.

It was fun to see Celina so happy and in her element surrounded by horses.

Rawhide and Pepperjack were supposedly best friends.  Except Rawhide nipped Pepperjack in the rear!

After a lunch back at our house, we drove the seven miles east on I-94 to the Painted Canyon, another section of the South Unit.  I had wanted to hike along the plateau, but something stood in the way of our trail - bison. 

This is as close as Celina wanted to get to the bison.  Can you tell she's nervous about what's behind her?

Our plan B became a one-mile hike on the Painted Canyon Nature Trail, which ended up being a lot more strenuous than the distance makes it sound.  It was sunny and blazing hot that day (but thankfully low humidity) and with canyon hiking, it's so easy to get down, but then you've got to get back up again.  The kids did great in the beginning, but then we needed more and more frequent water breaks and by the end, all three of us adults were carrying children. Despite the tears at the end, I'm proud of the kids for completing the trail and I'm happy they got to see spectacular scenery up close instead of from a scenic overlook.

After the Painted Canyon, Celina was game for more hiking, so Chris dropped us off at the Big Plateau trail head and he headed back into town to get dinner with the kids.  After being subjected to heat and sun all day, it was a relief to hike when the sun wasn't as high in the sky.  Plus, we got to cool off in a river. 

I had been looking over a map of hiking trails with a park ranger earlier in the day and when I saw the trail she was suggested crossed a river, I asked her if there was a bridge.  She assured me it wasn't very deep and we could wade across.  That evening we stood at the edge of the river and peered at the trail marker on the other side. I hesitated for a moment.  We were in the wilderness with not a soul around and the woman who is usually responsible for my children was now my responsibility. Us host parents ask a lot of our au pairs and I wondered if I was asking too much to hike into a wilderness full of bison and wade across a river.  I asked her if her parents, who are big into hiking and camping, would be okay with her doing this and she said they'd be proud of her. 

With that off our shoes and socks came and we sunk our feet into the squishy clay river bottom and slowly shuffled across.  The river was as shallow as the park ranger had promised and only came as high as my knees.  Once on the other side, the most challenging part was getting our shoes back on without planting our feet in the clay or slipping on the riverbank.

We never did see the bison or wild horses we had hoped to see on that hike, but reaching the top of the plateau was nonetheless rewarding.  Not another sole was around as we gazed cross the prairie and North Dakota's Badlands and listened to the chirps of the prairie dogs and let the gentle prairie breeze dry the sweat from our skin. 

Day 4: North Unit - The North Unit is over an hour's drive from Medora and its out-of-the-way location was the reason I didn't make it up there on my last trip. 

It was a little too early for lunch when we arrived, so we decided to walk along the Little Mo Trail, which is a paved nature trail less than a mile long.  After our canyon climb the day before, I assumed this would be no problem for the kids. It was already really hot and Matteo and Kiera wanted none of it.  That almost ended up a complete parenting fail except that Oliver and Soren were surprisingly pretty into it.  We weren't far from a campground where we found a picnic table under a large shade tree and has a pleasant lunch.

After lunch, we played a couple of rounds of Monopoly Deal before heading back out on the trail.

Getting food in everyone's stomachs must have been key to generating a second wind, because the kids were in much better moods after lunch.  Chris took Oliver and Soren on a hike up a butte, while Celina, Kiera, Matteo and I explored the area around the base.  We then continued along the 14-mile scenic road that winds its way into the park. 

Day 5: Chateau de Mores and the Petrified Forest - Each day was hotter than the day before, so by our last day in Medora, we had the kids take it easy and instead of hiking, we went to Chateau de Mores, a hunting "cabin".  We went because only because we heard about a reenactment of a German immigrant's life, played by a university professor from Dickinson.  The whole thing was completely lost on all the kids, but I certainly enjoyed it.

After lunch, Celina gave us the best gift of all by watching the kids for a couple of hours so that Chris and I could go on a hike that was more than a mile.  We drove out to the Petrified Forest trail head, which is accessible by dirt road.  From there it's about a one-and-a-half-mile hike.  We continued past the Petrified Forest, to the top of a plateau and then hiked along the ridge line for awhile.  The temperature topped out at 100 degrees that afternoon and there was zero shade.  It was hot for sure and we needed to take a lot of water breaks, but the hike in those conditions were surprisingly manageable.  As hot as it was, the humidity was thankfully low and there was always a light breeze. 

That hike was probably one of my favorites since it was just Chris and me in a rare couple of hours of just the two of us. 

Day 6: Drive home -Our drive home was a repeat of our drive out to North Dakota.  We packed as much as we could the night before, woke at 5:00 a.m. and ate breakfast in the car.  We made more stops than planned, (the return trip's shout-out goes to Tower City, North Dakota for their lovely city park) the kids argued over which movie to watch and all four never managed to nap at the same time.  With seven people packed in a car, the drive wasn't always pleasant, but we made it.  Without stopping at Salem Sue on the way home, we cut a half an hour off our trip and made it home in a mere 10 hours. 

Our family's first big road trip was a success.  My kids are so young that they will remember little if any of this trip, but I'm nonetheless thankful for the trip.  I don't know when we'll have the opportunity to travel again, but that just gives me plenty of time to dream about where we should head next.