Ockey Family Adventures: North Dakota Day 20

We found some bison right inside the park.

We needed about an hour to drive from the hotel into Theodore Roosevelt National Park. This park is divided into two sections, and we are visiting the lesser known north section first. Since it had rained most of the night, everything was really green and pretty muddy, but we weren't going to let that stop us from doing a few hikes.

There wasn't a single long hike on our agenda today, just a lot of short ones. The first was just a nature trail. We saw quite a few cool birds like a cedar waxwing, some spotted towhees, a few yellow warblers, but it was the bison that were the most impressive. The trail looped around to within 30 yards of them. Luckily, they were more afraid of us than we were of them, so it wasn't too scary, though.

We love seeing buffalo.

There were some cool stops on the scenic drive.

The scenery is beautiful in this national park.

This is the Little Missouri River.

We saw a beautiful Cedar Waxwing.

The buffalo were pretty close on this hike.

Mom and Dad are excited for a new national park.

Thank goodness for snacks in the car!

Our next hike was to a spot called the Prairie Dog Town. There were hundreds of prairie dogs living in the wide open prairie. Somtimes they would stand up and let out a high-pitched whistle of warning. It was so funny to watch them stand and screech. There little paws went up over their heads each time they did it. We got a little muddy, but we really enjoyed that hike.

We stopped at a few overlooks and got stuck in some road construction, but we also spotted some really pretty wild turkeys. It took us just over an hour to do the short scenic drive. Then we picked up the Junior Ranger booklets and had lunch at the Visitor Center parking lot right next to some grazing bison.

There is a large view at the end of the scenic road.

We did lot of little hikes.

Dax found a nice little seat on the rocks.

Mark helping point for a blog post!

Heading out to the prairie dog town.

The prairie dogs were right next to the trail.

Seth posing like a prairie dog.

We loved this hike so much!

There were little baby prairie dogs.

This turkey was beautiful.

It rained for the entire one hour drive to the south section, during which Mark spotted a coyote. We stopped at a few Visitor Centers. The first was called Painted Valley, and there wasn't much to do there other than look at the painted valley. We did buy a poster of the national parks that we can scratch off, too, this being our 29th park.

The bison wanted us to stay in the park!

Mark spotted this coyote carrying a bone.

We don't always stop by the signs, but we did in Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Painted Valley was a nice overlook.

The second Visitor Center was bigger, and we did a ranger program and walked through Roosevelt's cabin. Then we went off to do a half dozen short hikes. We saw a lot of the same birds, prairie dogs, and other animals in this section of the park. We also saw a few cute little desert cottontails. The buffalo ran right by us on the road, close enough that we were a little worried about our new van. The walks and overlooks were nice, and the mud was mostly avoidable. One hike took us through another prairie dog town to the old entrance station. Another had us walk along the edge of a large butte overlooking the river below.

We also saw feral horses. There are quite a few in the park, and they roam around pretty close to the road. This particular breed is massive, and they were so pretty. We enjoyed seeing deer along the trails, too. All in all, we really liked Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It was a lot more like the other parks in the West that we are used to.