There are 284 scenic miles that separate Dickinson, North Dakota and Glasgow, Montana, and we drove those miles this day in one of the shorter driving days at four and a half hours.
Our first stop shortly after leaving Dickinson was at the Painted Valley exit on I-94 east of Medora, ND. Here the prairie suddenly becomes the badlands. From the parking lot of the visitor center here one looks into the twisted and colorful valleys lying in the south unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
A few miles down the Interstate, at Medora, ND, is the entrance to the south unit of the park. Here the National Parkway Road takes one on a breath-taking tour of the Badlands that inspired the nation’s twenty-sixth president to urge Congress to set aside wilderness areas as national parks to preserve them and the wildlife that thrived within them. Along the way, Linda was delighted to spot a herd of wild horses along the road.
On the Parkway Road, we first came to the site of a prairie dog town where the little creatures sound warnings when danger comes near.
We also saw wild horses and a buffalo or two as we drove along the road. But the most impressive sight was the scenery of rock and stone and scrawny plants that consume whatever moisture they can find and cling for their very lives to the buttes and canyons that run everywhere in the park.
In the afternoon, we drove the rest of the way to Glasgow, Montana. On our way we could clearly see that a storm was approaching. Fortunately when it arrived, we were in Wolf Point, a small town on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. We took refuge in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant and holed up until the rain let up.
After settling in to our motel in Glasgow, we drove about twenty minutes to Fort Peck, Montana, a small town located in one of the windiest spots in the state. The town is located at the eastern end of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. It is where the prairie ends and the rugged hills begin.
When the pioneers crossed the prairie, it seemed endless to them. Miles and miles of an ocean of grass blowing in the incessant wind produced in part by the fact there are few trees to break it up. They thought they would never get out of the prairie.
But what they did not know is that just ahead of them, when they finally left the prairie, something much worse awaited them.
Photo: Buffalo relaxing at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota.
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