Day 3:Havre MT to Theodore Roosevelt Natl Pk North Unit, ND 9.6.09
Woke up at the AmericInn hotel on Rte 2 in Havre MT on Sunday in our ADA equipped room with the giant kingsized bed in time to wander in for group buffet breakfast with a full room of conservative looking young parents with lots of kids. Too much commotion for us so we got some cartons of milk, styrofoam bowls, a cinnamon bun, a toasted bagel, a cup of coffee for me (Barb doesn't drink coffee or alcohol---not that she'd drink alcohol for breakfast on a Sunday but she did mention liking Baileys in her coffee...hmmmmmm) and went to our cooler to fill the bowls with our own whole grain cereals and fresh huckleberries. Plus the peace and relative quiet of a car trunk picnic not too close to the highway seemed somehow more appealing.
We took off on Rte 2 headed east taking turns at the wheel. Started realizing Barb has a tendency to fall asleep driving after eating: yikes! But she doesn't realize she's doing it so when you ask her she declares "I'm fine!". We worked through that without any mishaps but a very stern "Pull over NOW" remark was necessary a few time. A 30 minute nap did wonders for her attention span. I was amazed that she could fall sound asleep--deep into delta--at the wink of an eye.
The rolling countryside looked a lot like the central Palouse of western Idaho....golden wheat, corn, some yellow/green rapeseed blossoms. Hot and dry. Very dry. Barb got sick of me commenting on the general overall total lack of humidity. We drank lots of water from our metal thermoses (what is the plural of thermos?).
Stopped at he Nelson Reservoir near Saco MT to see the campsites and use the bathroom. Lots of bugs sent us packing to find the Sleeping Buffalo Rock Hot Springs which turned out to be an old byproduct of exploratory drilling for oil that found hot water instead of crude. A health resort built by the govt WPA during the depression helped the local economy then tanked and fell into disrepair. New owner Roger Ereaux staged a publicity stunt to get into the Guiness Book of world Records by making the world's largest hamburger (weighing in at 6,040 pounds) back in 2000. He proudly showed us the news clipping taped to the wall, and the "grill/cooker" out front that needed a crane to lift the cooking lid on and off. I joked that any burger that big must technically be a meat loaf, but he wasn't biting...having (at the time) won the contest---until bested a few years later by a rival town. Hats off to Roger for showing us around the indoor hot and medium pools. He also showed us several books of First Nation carvings and petroglyphs from all over this part of Montana. A note about Roger: he is the one who told us about the underground town built by the Chinese railroad workers we'd missed in Havre the day before.
The Sleeping Buffalo Rock (sacred) we saw was moved to a safer corral circled roadside resting spot with another larger rock held sacred by the nomadic tribes that inhabited these rich lands for at least 5,000 years-- if not, most certainly, many more. I was bothered that a big overly full garbage can was inside the sacred stone relic area so Barb helped me move it off to the ground outside the monument which felt like the respectful thing to do for this revered space. Again...we were sorry to be passing through without more time to explore.
Sleeping Buffalo Rock
We pushed on stopping for late lunch/early dinner at a random place--eating broasted chicken from chickens raised who knows where and processed for the market by who knows who---prepared for the table by two barely functioning teenaged girls. We then realized we were following the Lewis and Clark route along the Missouri River. Two hundred years ago 16 year old Sacajawea helped gather plants and tubers (camas in eastern Montana?) to supplement their meat diet. Can't help seeing the irony. Did Sacajawea want to embark on this journey to unknown lands with a newborn on her back? Or did she have no choice? Barb and I wondered if the young women waiting on tables had children of their own and if so how were they managing? Was this diner job their only choice? Picked up a brochure in the diner [Bergie's in Nashua, MT: population 325] that had daily entries from both men's journals in May of 1805 as they traveled west and August of 1806 on their return east. Two hundred years ago their writing was filled with descriptions of all the animals they were seeing...buffalo, wolves, grizzly and black bears, antelope, deer, cougar, beaver felling trees 3 feet in diameter. They were traveling 16.5 miles a day, or 20 miles, or 27 miles on a good day. We are traveling 300 miles or 450 miles a day. Mixed feelings of awe, respect, sadness for a time that is forever gone. The majestic river Missouri still flows on its way to the Pacific and with it the magnetism of its experience, its past, its eyes and ears. What will another 200 years bring to this fragile wild place?
Spoke to a college student traveling on his motorcycle who told us Route 2 was under repair just over the border into North Dakota....dusty and rocky and slow going. So we opted to cut down south on Route 16 through Sidney MT [population: 4,774] along the mighty Yellowstone River. Local temperature posted digitally on the local bank: 99°. My my my.
Kept pushing so we could get to Theodore Roosevelt National Park's North Unit with plenty of time to set up camp during daylight hours. We just had to stop along the Yellowstone to take photos and walk around in the hot summer wind over the bridge and back again.
The land once we crossed the state line into North Dakota was agricultural, rolling hills, tame, dotted with small farms, cattle, wheat fields, power lines. All this surrounding the hidden jewel that showed itself as soon as we crossed the line to a vista point from the 2400' high bluff on route 85, revealing the deep cut badland canyons etched over time by the water of the Little Missouri River. Spectacular jaw dropping beauty. Only intensified by the deepening shadows of the sun sinking slowly in the west.
First thing we saw as we drove into the park: a lone coyote crossing the road in front of us...set against the hills and the deep canyon cut over the millenia by the Little Missouri River.
Uh-oh! Time to find a camp site. Welcome center was closed. Ranger station was closed. found our way to the Juniper campground area easily enough. Realized we had no firewood: doh! I asked a friendly lady at the washroom who brought us over an armload of cut up pallets, used furniture pieces and one cut up fencepost. Yay! This park is designated wilderness so you cannot pick up brush from the ground or even tie a clothesline to a tree so the fragile environment will stay preserved. We got set up before dark, then got ready to wake up before dawn to go out and shoot.
Total miles traveled today: 507 miles