The Lewis & Clark Trail

From Mike:
Leaving Minnesota:

   Leaving Minnesota we saw this farm.  The juxtaposition of the wind turbine, one part of a large wind farm, with the remains of the old farm was too poignant to ignore.  I wanted to say something profound about the plight of the farmer and the nature of farming in America, but then decided to let the picture speak for itself.

South Dakota
   The South Dakota prairie had a peaceful quality about it that is also hard to put into words.  The cold breeze was a shock and made it easier to understand the ruggedness of the pioneers who settled there. 

Karen is sitting in an actual prairie shanty.

The Big Slough where Laura Ingalls got lost

    I found out why there are no trees (or few trees) on the prairie.  Over time lightning strikes and the prairie burns; the grass and trees burn together.  The following year the grass grows back, but the trees--not so much. This is why part of the contract the early homesteaders had to make to earn their homestead was to plant trees.

North Dakota
     After staying two days in Brookings SD on Labor Day weekend, on Monday we made our way to Bismarck, ND by way of Fargo.  The day started very foggy and it was a bit unnerving to be traveling at 75 (the official speed limit for all of the western states) with only a few car lengths of visibility.  After a bit we came down off of a plateau and the sky opened up.

 North Dakota in the east looked very similar to Minnesota with acres and acres of corn and soy; but after a bit we started seeing Sun Flowers replacing the corn.  It started raining, our first day of real rain.   After an interesting visit to the National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown, where we saw some herded buffalo we settled for the night in Bismarck.   

Today we awoke to a bright blue sky which kept with us for our entire 600 mile journey to Bozeman, MT.

Very noticeable was that the fields of crops started turning more and more into prairie fields, many with black steers grazing.  As we proceeded west more and more fields had steers, plus the terrain as we headed toward Dickinson, ND started to look like mini grass canyons.

I wish we could have spent more time on the enchanted highway in Regent, ND. The road is lined with huge metal sculptures.  Here are two deer jumping over a fence:

The Painted Canyon and Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  As we neared the west of North Dakota I was shocked to see that the plateau gave way to canyons and badlands at

 Theodore Roosevelt National park.  The sensation was one of coming to the edge of the world.....flat, flat, flat...then off the edge! 

This National park has now become one of the highlights of our trip.  The 36 mile loop road is nothing short of spectacular, with prairie dogs, sage, canyons, rivers, and at the end a live buffalo eating grass on the side of the road (you'll see it in a future blog post).  There are 300 buffalo roaming freely within the confines of the park.  We only got to see the southern end, but this is one of the places I would like to visit again.   

 Buck Hill off the loop road in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota

On top of Buck Hill, reminded me of a Windows Desktop background!

I had never seen a Prairie Dog.  They were so funny.  They would whistle at you as they popped down into their hole, and would romp and covert with each other.

Montana

After coming off of the canyon lands, Montana in the east started at first looking very much like the plains we had left on the east of North Dakota; however, that quickly changed as we headed towards Billings and Bozeman.  Very noticeable were more and more steers grazing, and then, as we headed toward Bozeman, more and more horses. Prairie as far as the eye could see.   It was easy to see why they call Montana "Big Sky".

The trees started changing from Cottonwood to pine.

Pompey's Tower has the engraved name of William Clark (of Lewis and Clark). The only physical evidence on the trail of Lewis and Clark that he was actually there.

On the banks of the Yellowstone River near Billings the rocks are yellow.  I finally got it--Yellow Stones.    We will be visiting them again at the end of our trip. 

Tomorrow we head off to St. Mary, MT to begin our trip to Glacier National Park.   Although today was long, it was wonderful!  We were blessed with blue skies and spectacular terrain...

--Mike