You can’t watch a national park documentary without hearing about Theodore Roosevelt. Conservation was one of his legacies, and he created five national parks while he was president. (This wasn’t one of them.)
Before he was president, he spent time bison hunting in North Dakota and fell in love with both life in the west and the prospect of a successful cattle ranch.
So he invested in a ranch.
The ranch managers built this cabin for Roosevelt in 1883 (the Maltese Cross Cabin) while he split time between North Dakota and New York. (The cabin has moved around, and the roof has been replaced, but it still has its original ponderosa pine logs.) Eventually Roosevelt bought his own ranch, which is now part of the national park.
The park is divided into pieces that are kind of close to each other (but not really), so I didn’t get up to his ranch. But here is a prairie dog town! The prairie dogs were out, squeaking warnings to each other about the camera-happy tourists, so they kept their distance from the lens.
The park has sort of a badlands-meets-buttes feel, with some bare striped rocks that are obviously losing the battle to erosion, and some pretty green hills covered with scrubby bushes and grass.
I did the South Unit, which has a nice drivable loop where you can stop at overlooks to take pictures.
Some heavy, hoofed creature wandered through here.
I got there early, which was nice because there wasn’t much traffic, and because of the golden hour glow.
On the way out of town I visited the Painted Canyon Overlook, which is another piece of the park.
It was a good morning for bison sightings! Here they are doing bison things.
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