West 2008: Friday, July 18, 2008

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.

West 2008: Thursday, July 17, 2008

We left the motel in St. Cloud early and again headed west on I-94. We had about 654 miles to cover by evening. Our destination was Dickinson, North Dakota.

I-94 shoots straight as an arrow across the wide expanses of North Dakota at a speed limit of 75 miles per hour. We could see for miles in all directions, with wide expanses of blue sky above us and miles of concrete ribbon speeding by beneath us.

We made a couple of stops that day for birdwatching and photography. First we stopped at the Dawson Wildlife Management Area near Dawson, North Dakota. A sign with a binocular pictured on it caught Linda’s attention, and so we pulled in to this small clearing along a rural road.

I busied myself taking pictures of the area while Linda explored the perimeter of the clearing with her binoculars for signs of bird life. Her records indicate she saw a cliff swallow, western kingbird, marsh harrier, yellow-headed blackbird, white pelican, eastern wood pewee, eastern bluebird, yellow warbler, forsters tern, and a tree swallow.

Later, across the river from Bismarck, North Dakota, we stopped at the Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. Here she saw a red-eyed vireo, cedar waxwing, and catbird.

Fort Abraham Lincoln played a role in the history of another site we would visit several days later. This military post opposite the Missouri River was home base for the Seventh Cavalry whose commander was General George Armstrong Custer. It was the Seventh’s assignment to defend those who would open the west for both the railroad and the settlers that would follow.
In the summer of 1876, General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry left Fort Abraham Lincoln on a 500 mile-long journey into history. A problem had developed in what eventually would become southwestern Montana. Indian tribes who had not made treaties with the United States government were refusing to stay on their lands and threatened the westward expansion efforts. Under orders from President Ulysses Grant, General Custer and his men rode into the valley of the Little Big Horn River and one of the fiercest battles in the history of winning the west. None of General Custer’s men or himself returned to Fort Abraham Lincoln. Even their horses were killed in the intense fighting that lasted for two days.

We left the Fort as well, probably never to return, as we headed west to the town of Dickinson, a town of about 16,000 people situated on the eastern edge of some of the most spectacular scenery in America.

Photo: Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park across the Missouri River from Bismarck, North Dakota.