North Dakota: Bad Lands and Good Spots

We moved on to, through and out of Montana, but not before stopping in Cut Bank, where we found a lovely coffee shop, and two bicyclers who were also taking a break. They were riding from Seattle to Maine's coast on a fund raising tour for national Multiple Sclerosis. And, believe it or not, they had a lap top with them, on which they were updating their web site as they travelled. They were going to stay in a campground, which was pretty grody, but first they stopped at a local eatery. When the wait person asked where they were from and they explained their mission, she advised them to skip the grody place and set up in her backyard. The next morning she fixed them breakfast. Wow!

Well, you might know that Cut Bank is famous for having recorded the coldest temperature in the lower 48, so we have included a pic of the local commemorative 27 foot tall penguin.

Since we had visited the Big Hole Battlefield, we stopped at the Brear Paw Battlefield. This is where the Nez Perce were surprised by the final US Army attack, which came from the rolling hills of the east, the least expected direction. The battle raged on for five days, from September 30 until the surrender of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce on October 4, 1877. Starving and freezing, mired in eight inches of new snow, they put up a gallant defense. Some thirty men and over 100 women and children made a break for it during the first night and succeeded in escaping into Canada, only fifteen miles away. But Chief Joseph and the rest of the warriors stayed with the wounded, the elderly, the women and children; in short, with those who were the most vulnerable and least able to travel. Finally, out of food, with all of their horses run off, and his own children hiding and perhaps dying in the snow covered hills, he negotiated a surrender. In 1885 some 120 of the original 850 Nez Perce were allowed to return from Oklahoma, where they had been relocated, to the small reservation in Idaho.

We stayed the night in Malta, Montana. The town has a small but excellent Museum, with an intact dinosaur of the duck billed family, and many plains Indian artifacts, stunning bead work, weapons, and nineteenth century western European artifacts of the region. It was too dusty and windy to cook out that evening so we followed a suggestion from our campground hostess, and went to the Tin Cup restaurant at the local golf course. Yep, we had Montana steaks! Yum. We won't talk about the wine. To cap off a dandy day, we turned in, only to discover The Great Northern tracks ran right behind the campground and there were six very loud trains going through all night long.

The next day we took a scenic route into North Dakota, and headed for the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Pat had her National Park Passport book stamped, and we drove through the make believe town of Medora, where the sole entertainment was the nightly musical and flag waving event. Could have been Branson, Mo., on a much smaller scale. We stayed in the ghetto campground the first night - butt ugly, huge RVs, no taste place.

The Park was quite a contrast to Glacier-- and to Medora. The harshly eroded badlands landscape, the many Prairie Dog towns, the wild horses, the layers of soft coal called lignite, one seam of which burned from 1955 until 1971! But also the lush valleys, the grazing buffalo and the beautiful vistas all added up to a very richerience. We camped for a night along the banks of the Upper Missouri river, a peaceful, quiet oasis amidst birch and pine trees, where wild horses grazed just cross the river.

Up early the next morning, we lit out to cross North Dakota, using the freeway and whatever was to hand to speed us along to Fargo and then to Grand Forks, where we spent the night.