Wednesday, August 5 - Theodore Roosevelt National Park

We were in the car by 5:30 a.m. doing our usual  morning wildlife drive, a must in national parks of the west. This one paid off. First of all we saw an animal crawling across the road. It was dark, not thin but not too stout, fairly flat, with a long tail. We still can’t figure out what it was and we need to do more searching. I can’t believe the rangers couldn’t figure it out. One suggested it was a coyote but Rosie claims he wasn’t listening to the first part of the conversation. If he was, he really needs to learn more about wildlife to suggest that it was a coyote. The other ranger went to look up things in a mammal book as far as what animals lived in that range. It wasn’t a badger, it wasn’t a weasel, it wasn’t a prairie dog, it wasn’t a squirrel, it wasn't a beaver. The one ranger thought it must have been a marten but I’ve seen them, it was too small and the head was wrong. They decided it must have been a mink but that isn’t right either I don’t think.  A new species, perhaps?


Anyway, after sighting the mystery animal we saw the same large band of wild horses as last night, only this time with 19 horses instead of 14!   We stopped and turned off the car since no one else was on the road. Pretty soon we had 4 foals approach the car and check it out. Eventually one of them started nibbling on the car!

We weren’t sure what to do but soon the stallion nickered and 3 of them moved off. One especially curious foal stayed though, and nibbled more. Later on we found teeth marks on the detailing stripe!

The Band Stallion With the Beautiful Blue Eyes

And there is a precocious little colt that is darker grey and a bit dappled…with those same piercing blue eyes. He is adorable. He is lucky to live in a national park…hopefully he will be allowed to grow up and remain in his homeland, unlike his counterparts in the Pryors and in other areas of the west.

We saw over 50 horses this morning as well as quite a few bison. There is one bison cow with very strange horns…one points down and is extremely, extremely long.  My picture of it didn't turn out.

We got back to our campsite pretty early (8:30 a.m.) and started searching for a better one. We really wanted a site along the river and there was one open. Not the ideal one that has an awesome river view from the tent spot, but another that has a separate tent site between the river and the table area, and a private path down to the river. This would do nicely! We put chairs and a few things there to hold it and went back to our other site, threw everything from the tent inside the car and drove back down. We walked back and picked up our tent and carried it down the road fully set up…that elicited some funny comments from fellow campers. Rosie walked over to the bathroom and came running back a few minutes later to get me. She had emerged from the bathroom and looked up to see 3 horses at the end of the path looking at her. Suddenly they started trotting TOWARDS her! She ducked around a corner and watched and then ran to get me. They proceeded to meander through the campground…there was a lot of long, tasty grass to eat! It was a band of 3 bachelors. They must go through frequently because Rosie heard the campground hosts greet them with a “Hi, boys!”.


We were set up in no time and were going to get ready for a hike when I looked at the sky. Black front moving in…not good! It was a big one, and the hikes in this park are very open. We wouldn’t be hiking in the next few hours. We secured camp against the rain (lesson learned in Yellowstone!) and went to the campground in town to take showers, then to the Cowboy Café for lunch. We were standing there reading the menu when guy in a cowboy hat who looked like a local said “it’s the best food in town!” so we decided to eat there – we have learned to always listen to the recommendations of the locals when it comes to food!  Rosie claims her hot roast beef sandwich with gravy was heavenly, the best gravy she’s ever had (sorry Marc). We had pie too. Then we went to the park visitor center to ask (unsuccessfully) about our mystery animal as I related above. We also talked to the rangers about hike options but it was getting late enough that we decided to nix the hike idea. So it was back to camp for a nap for me and reading time for Rosie. But, the cicadas were deafening and I couldn’t sleep. I walked down to the river and Rosie eventually joined me. The banks were very thick, wet clay. My Teva’s still have that clay on them.

I made dinner (beef stew and cheese-garlic biscuits…yumm!) and then it was wildlife drive time, one last evening of it. Once again, we saw over 50 horses, many of the same ones we’d seen earlier in the day but also a few new ones. I was determined to see the band we’d seen from the highway on our way out the first day…with a paint mare and paint foal. We never did see them but we saw three horses far off in the distance that were in that general area and may have been with their band. There were several elk out there too. We did one very short hike at dusk out to get a better look to the south…it involved climbing over large rocks/boulders and Rosie was NOT happy, she was sure snakes were lurking under everything. St. Patrick had fallen over on the dashboard and she was convinced that it meant bad “snake luck”. On our way back to camp just at dark we had a big herd of cow elk was stopped on the road and then they ran across and off as fast as they could…it was fun to see. The wild turkey from the night before was still in the tree too but it was too dark for a picture. Why does one turkey continually roost in the same dead tree? Maybe it’s normal but it seemed strange to me.

We commented that night that we hadn’t seen any coyotes this trip but knew they were there…it’s great coyote territory.

Tuesday, August 4 Yellowstone to Theodore Roosevelt National Park

My alarm went off and it was still partly dark which I thought was strange, but I quietly began to take down camp and finally woke Rosie to just go wait in the car while I took down the tent. I also had to set up for the woman who had given us money to get a site for her. I kept wondering why there was no one around and then got in the car and the clock said 5:50! Rosie had set my alarm on my phone, forgetting it was still on central time. So, I had gotten up at 4:50 a.m.! So now it was 5:50 and we got to the end of the Slough Creek road at 6, the perfect time to look for wolves. We hung out for a while and nothing was being seen except bighorns (a strange spot for them, I thought…) so we watched them for a few minutes. We finally told Jeff thank you for his help the past few days and moved on to Lamar. Jeff had told us about a car rolled over out there – he had seen it coming in from Pebble Creek very early that morning and had gotten out with a flashlight, etc. but there was no one in it so they’d already been taken care of. I still haven’t seen any details but he speculated that it may have been a case where a bison charged the car, as it was in an area that had been very heavily populated with bison for the past few days. They were still there when we passed the car in the valley that a.m.
On our way back out of Lamar we got into a LONG bison jam.

One bull just stood in the middle of the road and blocked us all for over 10 min. A ranger coming the other way tried repeatedly to get him to move but he didn’t care or even acknowledge her attempts. Finally he decided to go on his way. We stopped a few times to scan the river but there were no bears or wolves. We did see the ospreys on the nest. We stopped at Roosevelt for a few pictures we had forgotten to take and then headed toward Mammoth.

Roosevelt Lodge Entrance

Leaving Roosevelt Lodge

We saw a Yellow-Bellied Marmot while driving up from Roosevelt.

We saw a few elk outside of mammoth but too close to “count”…they are probably tame Mammoth elk. We stopped a few times in the Paradise Valley for pictures…it looks so different driving north through that valley, and we usually only drive it going south.

The only real stop we made on our way to Medora was at the Canyon Creek battle site outside of Laurel, Montana. I never knew it was there until seeing it in a battlefield site book I bought at the Range Riders Museum early in my trip. This was a place that Chief Joseph and his band stopped on their run from soldiers after the Big Hole battle, on their way to the tragedy at the Bear’s Paw Mountains.

It probably isn’t visited very often but there is a stone ring where people have left things such as sweetgrass, etc. I left a rock I’d brought from NW Montana. 

We stopped at one of the beautiful Montana rest areas and I tried to take a nap while Rosie did soccer drills. Her ball rolled under a bush tough, and there are rattlesnakes around and she was foraging in the car for hiking poles to try and get it out… and I gave up trying to sleep. In Miles City we drove by the 519 Club, one of the places featured in the “Haunted Montana” book that Scot had been reading to us. Rosie refused to go in so we just took a picture from the outside.

We stopped for dinner in Glendive, it was late enough that we didn’t want to try making dinner, we were still hoping to get a campsite at Theodore Roosevelt Nat’l Park. The first place we found was Subway, we figured that would be good, lots of fresh veggies. But it was the slowest Subway in existence and we were there over 20 min. even though the line wasn’t very long. And, the cheddar cheese they put on my sandwich was shredded pizza cheese. NOT ok. They also gave me half the amount of tuna that other Subways do. We were not impressed and will not be stopping there again.

We said a very sad goodbye to Montana…I love that state so much and we figured we wouldn't be back for a year.  We arrived at Theodore Roosevelt National Park around 7:30 p.m and got one of the last two campsites…not a good one, in sort of a group area, but it was still a campsite in the park. We quickly set the tent up and took off for a wildlife drive. We saw LOTS of horses, about 50 that night.

One band that we saw was quite large, around 13 horses, and then there was another band nearby that seemed to be separate but the two were tolerating each other. It was interesting to watch the smaller stallion keeping the larger one away from the herd. We saw lots of snaking and other horse behaviors that Rosie interpreted for me. We did see some bison that night also.