Home on the Range, Lake Sakakawea State Park, North Dakota 9/18/2009

We left Montana and headed into North Dakota early this morning. Our destination was Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I had my heart set on doing a 2 hour trail ride in the park, but unfortunately the stables are closed for the season. The last time I was on a horse was when I was 14, so this was going to be quite the event. (The down side of traveling in Sept). Plan B turned out to be exploring the park via car instead. We hung out at the visitor’s center for awhile, watched a movie and perused the exhibits. (It was over 90 degrees again, so it felt like a good excuse to be inside an air-conditioned building). When we finally explored the park we were treated to seeing bison and hundreds of prairie dogs! (See today’s pic of these cute fellows). Unlike Yellowstone, which has lots of visitors, this park is practically empty. In Yellowstone there were always large crowds mulling around any animals. Here we had the bison all to ourselves. Yes, I now know more about Teddy Roosevelt than I ever thought possible. The rest of North Dakota was pretty much the same, miles and miles of rolling hills with amber waves of grain, except for the occasional sunflower field. It’s harvesting time so it was pretty typical to see the large rounds of hay scattered throughout the countryside along with combines harvesting wheat. On another note, in the south all we seemed to drive by were Baptist Churches, in North Dakota it’s Lutherans. We are camped in the heart of North Dakota next to Lake Sakakawea (alternate spelling). named after the Indian girl who was Lewis and Clark’s guide. Everything in North Dakota is broken down into three categories; Teddy Roosevelt, Lewis & Clark and Sakajawea. – anything else fuhgedaboutit. The campground is definitely prairie camping. Not something I am used to, but nonetheless I’m still enjoying the wide-open spaces and huge sky - the black flies I could definitely live without! We are going to continue exploring North Dakota tomorrow, but head even further north and venture into Scandinavian territory. Ya, you betcha! (For the record, yes everyone really does talk like that here!)