It's the journey.......: Bo's Journal 35 The rest of North Dakota

We drove up to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park looking specifically for longhorns and bighorns. We actually said that to Ranger Catherine Stanton at the visitor’s center. Lo and behold about 11 miles up the road there she was with a scope all set up and 15 to 16 bighorns in the sights. What a thrill and way beyond the call of duty! They were quite a ways off but at least Cokie could photograph their very white bottoms up on the very steep slopes.

We had spotted and photographed 5 or 6 longhorns shortly after we left the visitors center. We were thrilled to see a calf because the Rangers had told us that the herd was diminishing due to age and calves were very rare. There may be an effort to introduce new cows if funding is available. These smaller, less visited parks suffer the most when administrations cut funding and programs.

Of course we got to see more of the now plentiful and unpredictable buffalo.

It was interesting to us how different the badland rock formations were when you compared the North and South units of the park. Here in the North there tend to be more grey and beige tones with less of the pink and orange bands. The coal layers were fewer here so there obviously were fewer coal fires to oxidize the iron and other minerals. It was the intense heat that created the colors in the rock. The area around Regent and in the South Dakota Badlands show much more color due to the more plentiful minerals and the ancient underground coal fires. There were also these cool things called “Cannonball Concretions", formed when minerals built up in concentric circles in the sandstone and then eroded out onto the plains.

We thoroughly enjoyed both units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, finding the ruggedness and sense of isolation very restorative.

Kae wanted to see the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers up near Williston. She grew up swimming in and ice skating on the Yellowstone, so this was a bit of memory tripping for her. The North Dakota Historical Society has an outstanding interpretive center and museum on a bluff just across from the confluence. You can really see the difference in the color of the water in each river. The Yellowstone does have a yellow cast to it because of the strata of yellow sandstone it carves through across Montana. By the way, it is now the longest undammed river in the US.

My Ladies found a really swell American Legion Park campground outside of Williston where I could be off leash, run around, roll in the grass, watch birds or go swimming if I wanted. We were the only folks there for the two days we stayed. I voted to stay a week but my Gals are a bit more sensitive to mosquitoes and hot weather than I am so this time it was ‘humans rule’.

Our next stop was in Stanton at the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site. This area was home for more than 500 years to the Northern Plains Indians. These Earthlodge people hunted bison and game and were farmers and traders living in villages along the Upper Missouri River and its tributaries, such as the Knife River. There were three large villages in close proximity to each other; populated by the Hidatsa, the Mandan and the Arikara. It was the middle village, Awatixa, that was home to Sakakawea (Sacagewea) and her French-Canadian trader husband. They became important guides and interpreters for the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-05. This was another of those memory trips for Kae as she once lived in Sacajawea Park in Livingston, MT. and grew up with lots of stories of the famous Indian girl. It was interesting for her to see the actual birthplace of Sakakawea, (the spelling and pronunciation depends on which tribal language you are seeing). We then spent the night in Sakakawea Park; so Kae said it felt like the completion of a life circle.

Since we are always on the hunt for the unusual and different in these mid-states, we decided to shoot eastward and then due north across the wide Missouri again to Rugby to see the Center of the North American Continent. (Hey, why not, after the center of the United States was such a huge event?) Well, at least there was a substantial monument for this one, even if it was in the middle of a restaurant parking lot! The Fairgrounds campground was really swell too because it was free and had gophers!

Missouri River

The next thrill was the International Peace Garden. I don’t know about you but we had honestly never heard of the Peace Garden. We had seen some North Dakota license plates that said “Peace Garden State” but still didn’t know what that meant until Kae picked up one of those tourist publications and read about the 75th anniversary of the garden. Of course it became a ‘must’. This was one of those beautiful ideas conceived by a single person who pursued it until it was done. Dr. Henry J. Moore, a graduate of the famous Kew Gardens in London conceived of the idea in 1928 for a place …. “Where the people of two countries could share the glories found in a lovely garden and the pleasure found in warm friendships.” His dream, with the permission of the two governments, became a garden built on the border between the United States and Canada as a living memorial to their long term peace and friendship.” The dedication took place in front of a crowd of 50,000 on July 14, 1932 with the placement of a stone cairn and inscription which reads:

To God in His glory
We two nations dedicate this garden
And pledge ourselves that as long
As man shall live we will not take up arms
Against one another.

The floral plantings, commemorative buildings, monuments, fountains, waterways and vistas are all carefully planned and situated to create a place of peace and calmness filled with natural and planted beauty. It is a lovely reminder of what friendship, understanding and peace between countries can feel like; an excellent reminder in today’s world.