The Road to MN - Day Eight

First off, did I mention that the town of Glendive is a total dive! As Alex would say it's a real one horse town. It is the largest town east of Billings Montanta and there is nothing else in North Dakota until you get to Bismark. There was a Geocache in town so it wasn't a total loss. I did the Loose Caboose cache to log my find in Montana. After a decent breakfast we headed out of town, east on I-94. Our highlight for the day was visiting Theodore Roosevelt National Park. TR is in western North Dakota and is located on land that used to be his cattle ranch. He lived here for several years before becoming President. He credited is stay in North Dakota for making him tough enough to be President and also for the inspiration to create the national park system. We all owe Teddy thanks for having the wisdom and vision to put aside and preserve these national treasures.

The park itself is located about 40 miles east of the Montana/North Dakota boarder, just off the interstate. There is a nice scenic loop drive that gives you a really nice overview of the park. It takes about 90 minutes to do the drive, unless like us you get out of the car and explore a bit. There are several Prarie Dog towns throughout the park. Catie and Nik got a kick out of seeing all these little guys standing on there hind legs checking us out as we drove by. There is also a herd of Bison and a herd of wild horses that are freely roaming the park. We saw both and it was bretty cool. On Bison was only about 50 feet from the road so we got a really a great close up look at him.

Just outside the park is historic Medora. The town was built in the 1880's by French nobleman Marquis de Mores and named by him for his wife. In 1883 he build a large slaughterhouse and meat packing plant complete with an ice house for refrigeration. The plan was to slaughter local beef and ship it via the newly completed railroad back to the east coast. The plant never really made it and was abandoned. In 1907 the old buildings were destroyed by fire. The Marquis operated his meat packing plant during the years the Teddy ran his Maltese Cross ranch on the land that is today the National Park that bears his name.

Nik and I did a cache just outside the park entrance called the Frenchman's Folly. We also spend some time exploring the shops in medora and had lunch in a rustic dinning hall, complete with stuffed Buffalo and Elk.

The rest of the drive to Fargo was uneventful. The terain slowly leveling out to the mostly flat farmland. I can't believe we are spending our last night on the road tonight. It's really gone by so fast! Chris' back is doing really well. After the initial scare of Day two, it's gotten steadily better each day. We are all excited to get on the road in the morning to see our new house.