Hard to believe it's almost a year since we brought the blog up to date. We apologize profusely to all those who kept checking regularly and wondered what had happened to us. All I can say it was a busy winter, spring and summer and we hope to get caught up in the near future. We hope you remember the drill - oldest pictures at the bottom, latest pictures at the top so it's best to start at the bottom and work your way up. We hope you enjoy our pictures and forgive us if we've forgotten some of the details; after all, it's been a while!!!
You can actually see the shooting of Wild Bill Hickok and watch as he and the Dead Man's Hand - aces and eights - falls to the floor. Bet he wishes he'd sat with his back to the wall that day!
Our next stop of the day was the Journey Museum which takes you through time from the beginning of the Black Hills 2.5 billion years ago to the days of the Wild, Wild West. You can see weapons and toys from the Sioux, a prospector's gold scales and a bullet-pierced tunic from Wounded Knee. There are doors and drawers to snoop through, walls that are really windows, story walls that speak and the highlight for me was Nellie Two Bulls in her tipi. She is actually a hologram who mysteriously appears and tells you a story. I tried to get a picture of her but of course that was impossible since she was a hologram. Duh!!!!
A "Stabbur" with a grass roof was carved in Norway and imported to be a reception centre and gift shop. I had a tough time getting out of that gift shop without buying out the store.
Incredible pegged construction and hand-carved Apostles' heads and crosses named for St. Andrew are part of the many intricate carvings inside the Stavkirke.
The intricate wood carvings, fancy shingles and dragons' heads lifting towards the sky combine Christian and Norse symbols.
Our next stop was Chapel in the Hills, a church that was recommended to us by my sister and brother-in-law. Having a Norwegian background, I found this unique "Stavkirke" built in 1969 to be really interesting. It is an exact replica of the 850-year-old Borgund Church in Norway.
Ted's choice was Ronald Regan, a president he admired for his belief in free enterprise and his part in ending the Cold War with Russia.
September 30 - After spending 5 days camping just outside Rapid City, we decided it was time to check out the sights of the city. After shopping at the Christmas Store and buying some beautiful Black Hills gold jewellry at one of the local gold factories, we made our way downtown to the Presidential Walk. Seated or standing on busy street corners in the downtown area are life-size bronze statues of 35 U.S. presidents. By next year they hope to have all the presidents' statues completed. I chose to stand with John F. Kennedy and his son John, Jr.
View from Mount Coolidge Lookout in Custer State Park. In the distance you can see the granite pillars along the Needles Highway as well as the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve.
Further on down Wildlife Loop Road we met up with some more friendly "begging burros". These guys were so friendly they tried to force their way in through my window. By this point I was willing to give them anything they wanted. Fortunately they were happy with Special K crackers.
The annual bison round up occurred the previous day. Hundreds of people come to watch, but we're not big on crowds so we decided to pass. Can you imagine the noise and dust involved in rounding up 1500 bison? The bison are herded into a system of corrals along Wildlife Loop Road where park staff sort, brand and vaccinate them. To control the park population, 500 bison are sold at an auction on the third Saturday of November. Revenue from the auction remains in the park as part of their operating budget. The remaining bison are released back into the park.
Pronghorn antelope grazing in the park - for a minute I thought I was in Southern Saskatchewan!
Custer State Park is well known for its wildlife. It is home to one of the largest free-roaming buffalo herds in the world (about 1500), elk, whitetail and mule deer, pronghorns, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, coyotes, mountain lions and bobcats, but the park is best known for its "begging burros" and beg they did. What a bunch of mooches! Meet Ted's new best friend!
This time we were heading in the right direction and got a great view of Mount Rushmore as we entered the tunnel.
September 29 - Today we decided to visit Custer National Park. To get there we drove the amazing Iron Mountain Road, part of the Peter Norbeck National Scenic Byway. Along this road, the engineer used pigtail bridges to join three granite tunnels. Driving this road was quite an experience but the scenery was incredible.
The Full Throttle Saloon in Sturgis - empty now, but for one week during the summer it's crammed with Harley Davidson motorcycle riders. Four rows of motorcycles line Main Street for blocks. A small town of 7,000 becomes home to nearly 500,000 riders at a motorcycle rally that is legendary in biker circles. According to one guide book, "you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone in leather fringe". The week is filled with group touring, poker runs, short track races, drag racing, stunt performances, show and shines, trade shows, etc., but most of the bikers come to par-tay.
The mountain's spiritual significance is evident in the hundreds of prayer cloths strung along the trail from the visitor centre to the summit. I had read about the prayer cloths in one of our guide books and had mentioned to Ted how curious I was to see them. When we got to the parking lot where I took this picture, I could see him looking around as if he was looking for something. I asked him what he was looking for and he said "bear claws". I asked him why he would be looking for bear claws and he said he thought that's why we were there - to see the bear claws. I told him we were there to see prayer cloths, not bear claws. Time to put the hearing aids back in, I'm thinkin'!! However, his excuse is that I mumbled. Who do you believe???
It had been a long day and we'd travelled lots of miles from our campground near Rapid City but we still had a couple more stops to make. One of these was Bear Butte State Park. This 4426 foot high mountain was once the stronghold of Crazy Horse and has spiritual significance for several tribes of Plains Indians.
Wild Bill Hickock's tombstone. Ted thinks I'm obsessed with cemeteries, but I think you can learn a lot about the past in a graveyard. Besides how can you be in Deadwood and not check out the tombstones of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane?
Even legends need a final resting place and most of Deadwood's legends can be found at the Mt. Moriah Cemetery - one of the West's original "Boot Hills". The tombstones of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane can be found just behind these markers. Most historians believe that Calamity Jane's claim to have been Wild Bill's sweetheart was just a figment of her imagination, but her dying wish was to "Bury me beside Wild Bill" and this wish was granted. Wonder what Bill thought about that!
Nowadays Deadwood has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and its Main Street boasts restored building fronts, antique hotels, brick paving and vintage street lights. Much of the money for the restoration came from gaming taxes. Instead of streets lined with saloons, bordellos, gunfighters and prostitutes, you will find tour buses filled with people seeking slot machines, poker and blackjack tables. Maybe times haven't changed too much after all - just a little more civilized.
Couldn't visit the Black Hills without stopping in Deadwood! Now this is the wild, wild west! When the gold rush began, thousands made their way to Deadwood hoping to strike it rich. There was no law and no order for the first few years. Along came legends like Wild Bill Hickok, Potato Creek Johnny, Preacher Smith and Calamity Jane and the rest was the story line for many movies to come. The original Saloon No. 10 where Wild Bill Hickock was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall stood across the street but it burnt to the ground. The new Old Style Saloon No. 10 boasts that it's the "only museum in the world with a bar". It has dark panelled walls, sawdust on the floor, western and mining artifacts and is the site of live reenactments of the "Shooting of Wild Bill Hickock".
I've always been a huge fan of the Sundance Kid and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to cozy up to him. He bore little resemblance to Robert Redford but oh well . . .
Couldn't leave Wyoming without a visit to Sundance. We spent some time in the Crook County Museum and Art Gallery learning all about the history of Harry A. Longabaugh. He was wanted for stealing a horse, revolver and saddle in February, 1887 and was eventually arrested in June. He pled guilty to horse theft in August and spent 18 months in the new jail in Sundance where he got his name - the Sundance Kid. He later met up with Butch Cassidy and the rest was history. The Museum was really quite interesting and the art gallery was excellent.
Somehow our travels led us into Wyoming - welcome to the Devil's Tower - the nation's first National Monument. The Tower looms 865 feet above its base and 1267 feet above the Belle Fourche River. The stone pillar is 1000 feet in diameter at the bottom and 275 feet at the top. The Tower's markings are part of a Native American legend. The Kiowa tell the story of seven sisters and one brother. When the brother was magically transformed into a giant bear, the sisters ran for their lives. They climbed a nearby tree stump and it began to rise to the sky. The bear clawed at the bark of the tree, trying to reach the seven sisters but he failed. The sisters ascended into the sky and became the stars of the Big Dipper. The bear's claw marks still show on the tower. Sounds logical to me. It is a supernatural place, however; in 1977 it was the point of alien contact in Stephen Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
The beautiful Black Hills (the Black comes from the dark Ponderosa pine-covered slopes) as seen from Spearfish Canyon. The Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway is a 22-mile drive from Cheyenne Crossing to Spearfish and includes some incredible scenery - rugged cliffs, sparkling Spearfish Creek, beautiful Bridal Veil Falls and Roughlock Falls.
Located high in the Black Hills, Lead is also known for its super-steep streets. At the base of the street is Homestake's Open Cut Mine, one of the best known landmarks in the Black Hills. It is the site of the original discovery in 1876 and was expanded twice in the 1980's. Haul trucks capable of holding 85 tons of materials were used to move the ore to a mill for processing. The Open Cut is 1200 feet deep and 1/2 mile wide. Waste rock is stacked in waste rock facilities and then reclaimed for a beneficial use.
September 28 - Another busy day ahead. Our first stop of the day was Lead (pronounced Leed), part of the Deadwood-Lead Gold Rush. Although the Gold Rush only lasted from 1875 to 1877, it left a lasting impact on the town. Lead is home of the Homestake Gold Mine (1876-2002) which was recognized as the oldest, largest and deepest mine in the Western Hemisphere, reaching more than 8,000 feet below the town of Lead. While in operation, it produced 40 million ounces of gold valued at over a billion dollars. In 2007 the Yates Shaft (the white building seen above) was chosen by the National Science Foundation for a deep underground science and engineering laboratory which is currently being built in the underground tunnels. Now that's recycling on a major scale!
Rock climbers love scaling the granite formations which have names like Needles Eye, Little Devils Tower and Cathedral Spires.
We drove back to Rapid City via the Needles Highway which features three granite tunnels. The tunnels actually frame Mt. Rushmore in the distance but we were heading in the wrong direction!
One of the Native American sculptures found in the Indian Museum of North America.
Besides the incredible Crazy Horse mountain sculpture, the location is also home to a 40,000 square foot visitor complex that houses the Indian Museum of North America, the Native American Educational & Cultural Centre, an art/sculpture gallery, the sculptor's log studio home, a restaurant and gift shop. These are paintings of Korczak and his wife, Ruth, who still works and lives at the complex. Korczak began the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Scholarship with $250 in 1978. In 2008 it awarded the one-millionth dollar to Native American students. Quite a legacy!
This is an outline of how the world's largest sculpture in progress will look when it is finished. It will be 641 feet long and 563 feet high, carved in the round with a 219 foot high horse's head.
A model of Crazy Horse in front of the actual mountain sculpture.
Here you can see the work going on creating the head of Crazy Horse. He gazes out, pointing to the sacred Black Hills of which he once said "My lands are where my dead lie buried" in response to a question asked by a white man "Where are your lands now?". Crazy Horse died in 1877 after being stabbed in the back by an American soldier.
Not too far from Mount Rushmore is another huge sculpture in the works - Crazy Horse. Creation of the world's largest sculpture began in 1948 by Korczak Ziolkowski. While helping Borglum on Mount Rushmore, he was asked by Standing Bear and Lakota Sioux elders to create a mountainous tribute to North American Indians. When Korczak died in 1982 the mountain showed only a hint of a horse and its rider - Crazy Horse, a Lakota leader. However, he passed along his plans, vision and dedication to hard work to his wife and their 10 children and they are completing the project with no federal funding. He felt the people, not the government, should provide the financing. The 88-foot high face of Crazy Horse was dedicated on June 3, 1998, 50 years to the day after Korczak's first blast. They are now working on the horse's head.
A bust of artist and sculptor Gutzon Borglum
Another view of Mount Rushmore. Borglum wanted to include a place at the memorial to share Americal history with all the visitors so he planned a large room that would be carved into the vertical wall of a canyon behind the faces that would be called the "Hall of Records" where he hoped important documents like the Declaration of Independence would be stored. Work began on the Hall in 1938 but unfortunately the funding was cut off and only a doorway and a small hallway were completed just to the east of Lincoln's face.
Ted and I and the four presidents.
We walked the Presidential Trail where we could get a closer view of the Presidents - Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln. Borglum planned it so the presidents' faces would catch both the morning and afternoon sun. Each face is 60 feet high.
September 27 - The entrance to Mount Rushmore - one of the highlights of our trip! We walked across the Avenue of Flags to the Grand View Terrace. The carving of the faces of the four presidents into Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills was started in 1927 by Gutzon Borglum and completed in 1941 with the help of 400 workers. The faces tower 5500 feet above sea level and are scaled to men who would stand 465 feet tall. Borglum faced unimaginable difficulties in carving the Memorial - no roads in the vicinity, harsh winters, inadequate funding, the Depression, sculpting with dynamite and opposition from the local people. However, when it was completed everyone was awed and amazed by Borglum's accomplishment. It is truly awe-inspiring.
The Center of the Nation is marked by a 21-foot diameter monument made of South Dakota granite in the shape of the compass rose at the Belle Fourche Visitor Centre. Each of the states is embossed onto the monument and a 12-inch bronze marker from the Geodetic Survey marks the spot of the Center of the Nation. Flags of the 50 states surround the monument.
September 26 - Belle Fourche, South Dakota - the city located closest to the geographic centre of the U.S.A. The true centre is located in a pasture 13 miles north and ~8 miles west and is marked by a survey marker and an American flag.
One of the 26 rooms in the Chateau de Mores.
The Chateau de Mores - a 26 room, two-storey frame house built in 1883 as the summer residence of the Marquis' family and now a historical museum. When I was a child (many decades ago, I know!), I passed through Medora while on a holiday with my sister, brother-in-law and their two children. For some strange reason, the sight of this house stuck in my head and I vowed that I would one day go back and see it again. Today was the day! However by the time we got there, it was closed for the day so we peaked through the windows and walked around the grounds. It was a nice house and pretty grandiose for the time, I'm sure, but for the life of me I do not know why this house made such an impression on me. I may have to undergo some type of therapy to figure it out.
Back in Medora we visited Chimney Park. This is all that remains of the de Mores meat packing plant. The town of Medora was founded in April 1883 by a 24-year-old French nobleman, the Marquis de Mores. He named the town after his bride, Medora. With financial backing from Medora's father, he built a meat packing plant, a hotel, stores and a large home overlooking the new town. By the fall of 1886 all his various enterprises ended in financial failure and he, his wife and children all returned to France. He was killed by native tribesmen on the Sahara Desert in Africa in June 1896. He may have been adventurous and a visionary, but he certainly wasn't very lucky!
Inside the Medora Visitor Centre stands a replica of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse. Behind the Centre is the restored Maltese Cross cabin that Roosevelt used before building the Elkhorn Ranch. All that remains of the Ranch are a few foundation walls.
Real scoria is volcanic in origin. However, where coal seams have caught fire and baked the surrounding sand and clay, the locals call the result scoria. It is almost like a natural brick. Over the years, erosion has worn away the softer earth and left the bluffs capped with scoria, a harder, more resistant material. The colours are so vibrant.
Erosion has worn away all but the hardest materials leaving a field of buttes and canyons. The badlands are home to a wide variety of animals - bison, prairie dogs, several species of birds, mule deer, wild horses, white-tailed deer and elk - as well as over 500 species of plants.
The Coal Vein Trail sounded interesting so we decided to hike it. From 1951 until early 1977 a fire burned here in a coal seam. The intense heat baked the clay and sand alongside the seam which changed the appearance of the terrain and disturbed the vegetation. The layers of brick-red rock are locally called "scoria" but are more properly known as "clinker". The thick grayish-blue layer is bentonite. It was formed 55 million years ago when volcanoes spewed ash over a large area including North Dakota. Time, heat and pressure turned the ash into clay. Bentonite is used in over 1,000 products including chocolate bars, milkshakes and toothpaste. Makes you rethink what you put in your mouth, doesn't it???
Looks like we're being swallowed up by the earth, but we're actually just sitting on a ledge at the top of Buck Hill. The Badlands are often described as a moonscape and that definitely applied at this location.
A very unusual rock formation. Looks like someone with a very long nose kneeling in prayer to me. Or a dinosaur of some sort. Maybe an aardvark. What do you think??
We hiked the Wind Canyon Trail to a ridge overlooking the Little Missouri River. Two large herds of bison could be seen from this overlook.
Not your typical small town! This is a prairie dog town - one of many found in the grasslands of the Park. Of the five species of prairie dogs, only the black-tailed prairie dogs live in the Park.
He looks a little angry and confrontational. I'm glad we were on our side of the road!
After leaving the viewpoint, we drove the 36-mile Scenic Loop through the Park. I think the driver of the truck met his match when he came across this bison. Obviously no one told the bison that he's supposed to stay on the right side of the road.
In the same valley stood a lone majestic bison. Bison were reintroduced into the Park in 1956.
We were thrilled to see some wild horses racing across the valley.
September 25 - Our first stop of the day was the Painted Canyon Visitor Centre and Overlook at the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park near Medora. What an incredible view of the Badlands! The colours were amazing! Roosevelt first came to North Dakota in 1883. He became interested in the cattle business and joined two other men as partners in the Maltese Cross Ranch. In 1884 he returned from New York and started the Elkhorn Ranch. He first came to North Dakota to hunt bison, but by the time he arrived the large herds had already been decimated by hunters and disease. After watching the destruction of other big game species and the overgrazing of the grasslands which destroyed the habitats of some small mammals and songbirds, he became very interested in conservation. When he became president in 1901, he established the U.S. Forest Service and eventually established five national parks and 51 wildlife refuges.
We were expecting fields of grain and scenery much like that of southern Saskatchewan, but the bluffs and valleys were a pleasant surprise. The Badlands of North Dakota were shaped by millions of years of wind, rain, erosion, fire and the winding Little Missouri River.
September 24 - After spending our first night on the road at Glasgow, MT, we headed into North Dakota. Our trip south had begun!
This is an outline of how the world's largest sculpture in progress will look when it is finished. It will be 641 feet long and 563 feet high, carved in the round with a 219 foot high horse's head.
A model of Crazy Horse in front of the actual mountain sculpture.
Here you can see the work going on creating the head of Crazy Horse. He gazes out, pointing to the sacred Black Hills of which he once said "My lands are where my dead lie buried" in response to a question asked by a white man "Where are your lands now?". Crazy Horse died in 1877 after being stabbed in the back by an American soldier.
Not too far from Mount Rushmore is another huge sculpture in the works - Crazy Horse. Creation of the world's largest sculpture began in 1948 by Korczak Ziolkowski. While helping Borglum on Mount Rushmore, he was asked by Standing Bear and Lakota Sioux elders to create a mountainous tribute to North American Indians. When Korczak died in 1982 the mountain showed only a hint of a horse and its rider - Crazy Horse, a Lakota leader. However, he passed along his plans, vision and dedication to hard work to his wife and their 10 children and they are completing the project with no federal funding. He felt the people, not the government, should provide the financing. The 88-foot high face of Crazy Horse was dedicated on June 3, 1998, 50 years to the day after Korczak's first blast. They are now working on the horse's head.
A bust of artist and sculptor Gutzon Borglum
Another view of Mount Rushmore. Borglum wanted to include a place at the memorial to share Americal history with all the visitors so he planned a large room that would be carved into the vertical wall of a canyon behind the faces that would be called the "Hall of Records" where he hoped important documents like the Declaration of Independence would be stored. Work began on the Hall in 1938 but unfortunately the funding was cut off and only a doorway and a small hallway were completed just to the east of Lincoln's face.
Ted and I and the four presidents.
We walked the Presidential Trail where we could get a closer view of the Presidents - Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln. Borglum planned it so the presidents' faces would catch both the morning and afternoon sun. Each face is 60 feet high.
September 27 - The entrance to Mount Rushmore - one of the highlights of our trip! We walked across the Avenue of Flags to the Grand View Terrace. The carving of the faces of the four presidents into Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills was started in 1927 by Gutzon Borglum and completed in 1941 with the help of 400 workers. The faces tower 5500 feet above sea level and are scaled to men who would stand 465 feet tall. Borglum faced unimaginable difficulties in carving the Memorial - no roads in the vicinity, harsh winters, inadequate funding, the Depression, sculpting with dynamite and opposition from the local people. However, when it was completed everyone was awed and amazed by Borglum's accomplishment. It is truly awe-inspiring.
The Center of the Nation is marked by a 21-foot diameter monument made of South Dakota granite in the shape of the compass rose at the Belle Fourche Visitor Centre. Each of the states is embossed onto the monument and a 12-inch bronze marker from the Geodetic Survey marks the spot of the Center of the Nation. Flags of the 50 states surround the monument.
September 26 - Belle Fourche, South Dakota - the city located closest to the geographic centre of the U.S.A. The true centre is located in a pasture 13 miles north and ~8 miles west and is marked by a survey marker and an American flag.
One of the 26 rooms in the Chateau de Mores.
The Chateau de Mores - a 26 room, two-storey frame house built in 1883 as the summer residence of the Marquis' family and now a historical museum. When I was a child (many decades ago, I know!), I passed through Medora while on a holiday with my sister, brother-in-law and their two children. For some strange reason, the sight of this house stuck in my head and I vowed that I would one day go back and see it again. Today was the day! However by the time we got there, it was closed for the day so we peaked through the windows and walked around the grounds. It was a nice house and pretty grandiose for the time, I'm sure, but for the life of me I do not know why this house made such an impression on me. I may have to undergo some type of therapy to figure it out.
Back in Medora we visited Chimney Park. This is all that remains of the de Mores meat packing plant. The town of Medora was founded in April 1883 by a 24-year-old French nobleman, the Marquis de Mores. He named the town after his bride, Medora. With financial backing from Medora's father, he built a meat packing plant, a hotel, stores and a large home overlooking the new town. By the fall of 1886 all his various enterprises ended in financial failure and he, his wife and children all returned to France. He was killed by native tribesmen on the Sahara Desert in Africa in June 1896. He may have been adventurous and a visionary, but he certainly wasn't very lucky!
Inside the Medora Visitor Centre stands a replica of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse. Behind the Centre is the restored Maltese Cross cabin that Roosevelt used before building the Elkhorn Ranch. All that remains of the Ranch are a few foundation walls.
Real scoria is volcanic in origin. However, where coal seams have caught fire and baked the surrounding sand and clay, the locals call the result scoria. It is almost like a natural brick. Over the years, erosion has worn away the softer earth and left the bluffs capped with scoria, a harder, more resistant material. The colours are so vibrant.
Erosion has worn away all but the hardest materials leaving a field of buttes and canyons. The badlands are home to a wide variety of animals - bison, prairie dogs, several species of birds, mule deer, wild horses, white-tailed deer and elk - as well as over 500 species of plants.
The Coal Vein Trail sounded interesting so we decided to hike it. From 1951 until early 1977 a fire burned here in a coal seam. The intense heat baked the clay and sand alongside the seam which changed the appearance of the terrain and disturbed the vegetation. The layers of brick-red rock are locally called "scoria" but are more properly known as "clinker". The thick grayish-blue layer is bentonite. It was formed 55 million years ago when volcanoes spewed ash over a large area including North Dakota. Time, heat and pressure turned the ash into clay. Bentonite is used in over 1,000 products including chocolate bars, milkshakes and toothpaste. Makes you rethink what you put in your mouth, doesn't it???
Looks like we're being swallowed up by the earth, but we're actually just sitting on a ledge at the top of Buck Hill. The Badlands are often described as a moonscape and that definitely applied at this location.
A very unusual rock formation. Looks like someone with a very long nose kneeling in prayer to me. Or a dinosaur of some sort. Maybe an aardvark. What do you think??
We hiked the Wind Canyon Trail to a ridge overlooking the Little Missouri River. Two large herds of bison could be seen from this overlook.
Not your typical small town! This is a prairie dog town - one of many found in the grasslands of the Park. Of the five species of prairie dogs, only the black-tailed prairie dogs live in the Park.
He looks a little angry and confrontational. I'm glad we were on our side of the road!
After leaving the viewpoint, we drove the 36-mile Scenic Loop through the Park. I think the driver of the truck met his match when he came across this bison. Obviously no one told the bison that he's supposed to stay on the right side of the road.
In the same valley stood a lone majestic bison. Bison were reintroduced into the Park in 1956.
We were thrilled to see some wild horses racing across the valley.
September 25 - Our first stop of the day was the Painted Canyon Visitor Centre and Overlook at the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park near Medora. What an incredible view of the Badlands! The colours were amazing! Roosevelt first came to North Dakota in 1883. He became interested in the cattle business and joined two other men as partners in the Maltese Cross Ranch. In 1884 he returned from New York and started the Elkhorn Ranch. He first came to North Dakota to hunt bison, but by the time he arrived the large herds had already been decimated by hunters and disease. After watching the destruction of other big game species and the overgrazing of the grasslands which destroyed the habitats of some small mammals and songbirds, he became very interested in conservation. When he became president in 1901, he established the U.S. Forest Service and eventually established five national parks and 51 wildlife refuges.
We were expecting fields of grain and scenery much like that of southern Saskatchewan, but the bluffs and valleys were a pleasant surprise. The Badlands of North Dakota were shaped by millions of years of wind, rain, erosion, fire and the winding Little Missouri River.
September 24 - After spending our first night on the road at Glasgow, MT, we headed into North Dakota. Our trip south had begun!
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