Medora

Our hotel was located on the outskirts of Fargo in an area that seemed to be an industrial park, wide and flat and lots of pavement.  I ran a few laps in the parking lot and watched another hazy orange sunrise outside.  We were far enough north that we never experienced any of the high temperatures plaguing other parts of the west, especially Arizona, but the poor air quality from Canada lingered. 

This area of North Dakota was called the Drift Prairie Region, an interesting region between the Red River Valley and the Missouri Plateau, formed by retreating glaciers and filled with small lakes and potholes left over from melting ice.  There were fields of wheat and corn and rolling hills – it was always interesting to see changing geology on this road trip – and we also started to see more and more sunflowers, huge fields of them.  I learned that North Dakota was the top sunflower producer in the country, with a total of 625,000 acres planted, and this was the best time of year to see them.

 

 We did not think that this flat land had increased in elevation any, but we came along a surprising sign on I-94: Continental Divide, Elevation 1485.  It turns out this is a north-south continental divide, also called the Laurentian Divide, separating the Hudson Bay watershed to the north and the Gulf of Mexico to the south.  A humorous anonymous writer on Google explained, “To many travelers of I-94, the sign appears to be a mistake, or perhaps a self-deprecating joke dreamt up by the North Dakota Tourism Office to make light of one of the flattest landscapes in the world.”

Part of I-94 in this region paralleled a county highway known as the Enchanted Highway, a series of large metal sculptures placed along it.  We spotted one from the road called "Geese in Flight" and pulled off for a photo with the Mini, but did not have time to see the others.

We also saw a sign saying that this was Peggy Lee country.  The singer was born in nearby Jamestown, and she is remembered mostly for the song “Fever,” which I found on YouTube and played through the sound system.  (I have learned a great deal about the Mini’s sound system and its complicated computer on this road trip!)  I best remember Peggy Lee as the voice of the Siamese cats in the Disney classic Lady and the Tramp (“We are Siamese if you please, we are Siamese if you don’t please,” which remains one of the most accurate descriptions of a Siamese cat I know) as well as the sultry Pekingese torch singer Peg:

He's a tramp, but I love him
Breaks a new heart every day
He's a tramp, they adore him
And I only hope he'll stay that way.

 
We also saw more and more windmills, as we did all over the west, and it cheers my heart to see so much renewable energy being generated where, as Dylan sings, “the wind hits heavy on the borderline.”  It was an even better harvest than sunflowers.  It was along I-94 that we also caught our first sight of two iconic western plants that we would see much of in the coming weeks, cottonwood trees and sagebrush, covering the rolling hills in shades of pale blue.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park sprawls across 70,000 acres in the “badlands” section of North Dakota, a part of which we had visited in our 2016 trip.  It is divided into the North Unit, South Unit, and Elkhorn Ranch Unit.

 

We approached from the east into the South Unit, and stopped at the Visitors Center, where there was a great view of the Painted Canyon, a desolate but very beautiful place, dotted with what looked like huge anthills spread out in a sea of green tinged with pinks, terrain that was much different from what we had driven through all day.

We were staying for two nights in the historic Theodore Roosevelt-themed Rough Riders Hotel in Medora, one of the most interesting destinations thus far on our road trip.  Medora was a small town, with a population of 121 according to the last census, and appears to rely heavily on visitors to the Park and surrounding area.

The hotel was opened in 1884, a year after the town was founded, and has a very nice library, mostly focusing on Roosevelt and that period of history.  We checked in early and found a Teddy Bear awaiting us in our room, which was a nice touch.

 

 

We had plenty of time to explore this small town nestled beneath high badlands-type mesas all around.  When we stepped out of the car, I told Martha, “This is the first time I feel as if we are in the west!” 

 

We had a pizza and some good local beers, Black Leg Centennial IPA, at Badlands Pizza, which had an interesting door-handle.

 

I sat on the porch and talked to some folks at a little gift shop called The White House (they don’t miss any opportunity to remind us about the one-time President) and found out they were local residents.  “I work in that shop over there,” a woman told me.  I asked about the winters here in what appeared to be hot, dry, desert country, and she confirmed that they had snow in the winter – a lot of snow – and temperatures dropped well below freezing.

 

Martha had signed up for an interesting live evening event just outside town called the Medora Musical, a musical revue held outdoors in the Burning Hills Amphitheater.  It was billed as:  “A little history. A little humor . . . It’s good old-fashioned family fun with thrilling variety acts, live horses on stage, a firework finale, and new twists each summer. All while celebrating the history of Medora, Teddy Roosevelt, and the historic American West.”  That is exactly what it was, and it was great fun!

 

We returned to the Rough Riders Hotel, later than usual for this pair of travelers still on Eastern Time here in the Mountain Time zone, to find little Teddy waiting for us next to our bed.