Theodore Roosevelt National Park

We are now staying in Medora, North Dakota while visiting Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Medora is a very small town, the exit from the freeway leads right into the main street downtown. When you exit the town at the other end the main street feeds right back onto the freeway. No stop lights in town and very few side streets. They have a few tourist activities like a cowboy museum and a big musical they put on during the summer at an outdoor amphitheater.

We arrived here in a very cold rain. We have been lucky for most of this trip and have not had to deal with setting up or taking down the motor coach in rain. This stop made up for it as it had been raining very hard and we had to walk through lots of puddles while trying to get things set up. Both of us had soaking wet feet when we got every thing set up.

It started raining even harder after we got set up and we really felt sorry for the folks coming in after us. The next day we had planned to go visit the park but it rained again all day. We did leave the coach for awhile to go into town only to discover how tiny it was and apparently no one goes out in the rain, it looked abandoned.

On our final day in town it cleared up so we went to visit the park, the south entrance is right at the edge of town. We spent several hours there, we had packed our lunch and snacks so did not have to worry about leaving to go get food. We did the 36 mile scenic loop and are very glad we did not attempt it in the rain the day before. It would have been difficult to get out and take pictures in the rain. The park is part of what they call the Badlands of North Dakota. We have actually visited Badlands National Park in South Dakota on a previous trip and had thought about going again on this trip but have decided to skip it.

The park is full of prairie dogs, bison and mule deer.

Prairie Dog Town

Prairie Dog Town

Prairie Dog

Prairie Dog

Prairie Dog

Bison

Proghorn

Mule Deer

Scenery

Scenery

Scenery

Scenery

Scenery

After visiting the south part of the park we drove to the north entrance, which takes a couple of hours to get to from Medora. We then did the scenic drive in that part of the park, the landscape is a little different but saw many of the same animals. We did encounter a traffic jam in the park on the return part of the scenic drive. It was a Bison traffic jam. They had taken over the road and were blocking one side of it. A truck in front of us decided to pass them which seemed to annoy one of them so he then moved over to that side of the road and they blocked the whole road. Got some good close ups as we road along side them. Eventually they all got back on one side and we were able to pass and get back out of the park.