This park reminded me of Capitol Reef for three reasons: One,
it felt fairly small; Two, it was a nice surprise (didn’t really know what to
expect, but it turned out great); and Three, the landscape seemed a little
similar. I guess there is actually a
fourth similarity…it was very uncrowded.
The caffeine did indeed mess up our sleep. We all had a restless night. (If one does, we all usually do). And it was raining when we woke up this
morning. Needless to say, we did not get
the early start that I was planning on, but it didn’t matter because the sun
wasn’t out anyway. The Painted Desert
Canyon is supposed to be beautiful in the morning sunlight. So we skipped that and slept in a bit.
Then we went to the South Unit VC to get our bearings, watch
the park film and go through the museum.
The girls also picked up Jr. Ranger books. Next we headed out to hike. We took a wrong turn and got to see Prairie Dogs
and Wild Turkey. Then we missed our turn
and had to go back. We finally found our
hike that ended up being a horse trail across the Little Missouri River. It would have been fine, except apparently
horses don’t need bridges across rivers, but I do. So we turned around yet again. This time we went back and turned down a
gravel road that led to the Paddock Creek Trail. We had discovered it in all our wanderings. It was not a loop so we were just going to
walk down till we decided to come back.
Not surprisingly, there was an unmarked fork in the trail and we took
the wrong one. Can I just say there is
not great signage in this park? These
were the most primitive and poorest marked trails we’ve been on the whole trip. But it made it feel rustic! When we go to the main road, I knew we had
gone the wrong way, so we turned around and went back to the fork and took the
other path. This one led right through
the middle of a gigantic Prairie Dog town.
We walked for a while and then Brad and the girls climbed a little hill
to rest and eat granola bars. I sat at
the bottom of the hill to take their picture and because I was too pooped to
climb. As soon as we were settled, Audra
said, “Oh my goodness!” She had heard a
grunt behind her and looked over her shoulder to see 37 buffalo headed straight
for the hill. We think they were about
100 yards away. We grabbed our stuff and
calmly, but quickly walked back to the trail and headed toward the
trailhead. They were crossing the trail
behind us at an angle so they were not going our direction, but they did walk
right next to that hill. It was kind of
an adventure!
After this we returned to the VC to attend a Ranger led tour
of Theodore Roosevelt’s Maltese Cross Cabin.
It was moved here in the 1950s. With
that, the girls had finished their JR books and Carmen received her 13th
medal, Audra her 10th I think.
This might be our last national park!
That makes me sad. We are still
uncertain of our plans for the rest of this week. We would like to go to Mt. Rushmore and
possibly Badlands NP, but this is the week of Sturgiss, a huge motorcycle rally
or something (hundreds of thousands of bikers!) just outside of Rapid
City. We will have to call to see if
there is camping available anywhere in the area.
Oh – and tonight we went back to the pizza restaurant because
it was good, they have wifi, and we watched more Olympics. (Women’s balance beam! Oh the drama!)
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