Theodore Roosevelt

From Wikipedia – This region that enticed and influenced President Theodore Roosevelt consists of a park of three units in the northern badlands. Besides Roosevelt’s historic cabin, there are numerous scenic drives and backcountry hiking opportunities. Wildlife includes American bison, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and wild horses.

• Established: 11/10/1978
• Annual Visitors: 749,389
• Size: 70,447 acres

Driving out of Yellowstone to Billings, Montana, September 29, 2020

Driving from Billings to Wibaux, Montana. September 30, 2020

Theodore Roosevelt National Park – October 1, 2020

We stayed in the Roadway Inn (formally the Beaver Creek Lodge) located in the 4^th smallest County Seat in Montana, Wibaux, last night. 300 some odd people (According to a local) live in town and there are roughly 1000 in the whole County! We also drove through Slope County’s County Seat, Amidon, North Dakoda which was the smallest populated County Seat in America with a population of 20, until, in the mid 2000’s Gann Valley, S.D. beat them out with only 14 residents! (useless trivia for your next dinner party!)

I stopped to get a coffee at Palace Cafe in Wibaux and the woman who served me was super friendly and knew a tremendous amount about the small town. They have 5 churches, she told me where people in town work like the nursing home, school and government offices since they are the County Seat. She was going to charge me $1.20 for a large coffee a she went out of her way to warm my milk up on the stove so I felt guilted into buying something else…like the town’s favorite sweet, her handmade doughboys…a foot-long fried doughnut the size of a Subway sandwich!  Oh! and did I mention she made the maple frosting she smothered on it!? It was amazing…yes, I shared with Gary!

Just before Theodore Roosevelt NP you drive through Little Missouri National Grasslands. Gary and I didn’t know there were any “National Grasslands”  : ) The terrain we drove through is mostly flat and is used for agriculture, mostly feed for cattle.

At the South Unit Visitor Center stands Teddy Roosevelt’s Maltese Cross Cabin which he used as a second home and hunting cabin when he was not living in New York. He also had a cattle ranch called Elkhorn Ranch. He was known for working hard with his ranch hands and he loved to hunt. I found the below quote beautiful, especially coming from a hunter.

“…We get exactly as much in hunting with the camera as in hunting with the rifle; and of the two, the former is the kind of sport which calls for the higher degree of skill, patience, resolution, and knowledge of the life history of the animal sought.” Theodore Roosevelt, 1901

“As Governor of New York and President of the United States, Roosevelt made conservation a primary focus. Under his presidency (1901 – 1909), nearly 230 million acres were protected in the form of national forests, parks, monuments and reserves. This conservation legacy established a precedent for the 1900s and beyond. Today there are thousands of protected lands throughout the country.”

https://www.nps.gov/thro/learn/historyculture/maltese-cross-cabin.htm

We drove about half of the Scenic Loop Drive around the South Unit. A portion of the loop was closed due to eroding sandstone mountains effecting safe passage. There are virtually millions of Prairie Dogs on this loop! There are hundreds of communities of these cute little cousins to squirrels that I have ever seen. See our pics! We watched them from sometimes less than 2 feet from the car. They were roughhousing with one another, going in and out of their holes and “barking” to one another as they scurried around and stood on their hind legs or wagging their tails on all fours.

Dogs cannot get out of the car basically at all on the Scenic Drive in the park as they need to stay in parking lots and on pavement, no trails, but we enjoyed another Bison/Buffalo traffic jam, See pics. And the highlight of my animal tour today was photographing coyotes on the knoll in the distance as they scoured the hundreds of Prairie Dogs in the plains just below them. See our pics with the Coyotes and Prairie Dogs in the same shot! Rangeley slept soundly in his crate in the van after we exercised him early that morning.

We got our ND geocache on a 2 mile walk to a collection of old farm equipment in Bowman. The collectors call themselves Yesterday’s Farmers, established 1981. See pics.

We finished the day by checking into the Bowman Lodge in Bowman, ND. We are on our way to Custer, South Dakoda tomorrow. We will go to Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse and Custer State Park all in addition to going to Wind Cave and Badlands NP’s over the next three days. Stay tuned and enjoy the slide shows in this journal of the last few days!