Soon into our journey yesterday, we realized that Home on the Range is not just a line from a song. Indeed, it's also a stop on the journey from the wilds of MT to Theodore Roosevelt National Park (at exit 7).
After passing wistfully by Home on the Range, we entered Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP; the sole national park in the entire state of ND). Soon after we entered, we realized that the park has more prairie dogs than you can shake a stick at. Luckily, we like prairie dogs and didn't have a stick handy to spend the day trying to shake at them.
In addition to prairie dogs, TRNP also has wild horses. The first we saw came as a bit of a shock, as it ran by relatively close to us. After a bit, we got used to them, and saw them almost as buffalo at Yellowstone. (As we overheard one visitor say, "After a while you start thinking 'another buffalo? ho, hum'")
We also encountered a non-touted bit of wild life at the park as we were walking up a path filled with bluebells (which made me - Nancy - smile, since there are a lot of blue bells in MN). We saw two dung beetles pushing their ball of burden along. Tragically, on our way back down the path, we saw one dung beetle, valiantly trying to push his ball of burden, and, a little way away from him, a squished dung beetle.
After seeing the fun that the prairie dogs and horses (although perhaps not the dung beetles) were having, our animals (Mischievous Monkey, Bearable Bear, and Not Tigger Tiger) got out to stretch their legs and have some pictures taken. Since TRNP is somewhat less popular than Yellowstone and Grand Tetons (to put it mildly), they didn't get anyone besides us taking their pictures. (At the other parks, several people took their pictures, and they felt rather famous). In one of the pictures, they decided to pretend to be elk.
After TRNP, we decided (apparently not learning all that well from MT) to drive for "just a bit" till we got to a hotel room. However, we had learned at least a bit of a lesson from our MT experience since we used Cap'n Mick Mick (the GPS) to look ahead to see whether the bit we'd be driving would be in the 50 mile range or the 200 mile range (it turned out to be about 170 miles) before we found a hotel for the night. During the journey to a hotel, we got a reminder of just how close we are to Canada (or of just how much 
of a difference all those ehs make in people's speach) from a sign assuring our neighbors to the north that they could be understood at a local restaurant. We also learned that the town we would be staying in is the "center of the nation."
No comments:
Post a Comment