Dakoting, Part 4: Teddy Roosevelt

Day 5

Up from the motel and tried to find a place for breakfast in Medora. It's one of these tiny seasonal towns so everything is shut. We're told that the only option is at the convenience store, and yep, that's the place to be. Everyone in town is hanging out there.

One thing that surprises me about North Dakota (and South, too) is the lack of accents. I guess I expected everyone to sound like the movie Fargo, but not so much. 

Drive into the park, it's mostly history lessons about Teddy Roosevelt at the visitor center. I'd heard of the Rough Riders and the story about getting shot, but here's some awesome facts (from Amazing Ben)

• He stood outside and gave a two-hour speech in Milwaukee immediately after being shot in the chest in an assassination attempt.  It was only after the speech ended that he went to the hospital to get the bullet removed.
• While he was out West, some douchebag named Mike Finnegan and his gang stole TR's boat.  Instead of crying like a girl about it, Roosevelt pursued them for two weeks through the Dakota Badlands, kicked their asses, handed them over to the authorities and got his boat back.
• He returned to New York and was made commissioner of the NYPD.  Instead of being a pussy and hiding in his office all day like the commish on Batman, TR went undercover as a beat cop and walked the streets of New York trying to catch policemen slacking off or taking bribes.  If he busted them in the act, he fired them, punched them in the mouth and then stuffed them into a garbage can.
• TR won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end to the Russo-Japanese War.  How many people in history can claim that they won both the Nobel Peace Prize for making peaceful and harmonious shit happen as well as the Congressional Medal of Honor for kicking asses and possibly even taking names?

Teddy is my new spirit animal. give me strength, TR

Drive an hour up the highway to tour the north unit of the park. We see only three people while we're there.

Any day you see more animals than people in a national park is a good day. 

The landscape is beautiful here, much more impressive than badlands: huge, wide-open multi-colored valleys. Tons of bison and mule deer everywhere.

Drive back to south unit and tour the part of the park. Big sweeping valleys, petrified mud

Bentonite clay. look it up, it's pretty badass. Also, those round things on the left are called cannonballs. because it's TR natl park, they have to be named something awesome.

Campsite much more chill than badlands, and not so windy. Cold as balls though. 
Day 6

Woke up extremely cold. Brutal. Drove to a remote section of the park to a petrified forest trail.

Interesting petrified trees, not quite as pretty as Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, but still pretty cool.

pictured: pretty cool

We did trail as a loop, which included a long boring traverse of a prairie, and one little scary encounter with bison herd who didn't like us coming too close.

Saw a recently deceased bison, already picked clean. Gross.

caution: parental warning. discretion advised. I probably should have told you that before you saw the picture. my bad.