Good Times at the Badlands! - Park #7
After our stop at Painted Canyon, we headed to Medora for some park action. We were surprised to find out that they had moved Theodore Roosevelt's cabin from his Chimney Butte Ranch to just behind the visitor's center and some of his actual belongings were in the cabin. The cabin is known as Maltese Cross Cabin and has a hand carved cross on the corner.
During Roosevelt's presidency, the cabin was acquired for the World's Fair, hosted in St. Louis, MO. The cabin traveled from Missouri to Portland, OR for the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. It would spend time in Fargo, ND before settling on the grounds of the state capital in Bismarck, ND. The daughters of the American Revolution took over care of the cabin and in 1959 the cabin finally made its way to the park.
The ranger had given us a tip that a herd of bison had been spotted in the park near Peaceful Valley Ranch and we couldn't wait (okay I couldn't wait) to find out if they were really there, but first we had to drive through the park like Candyland making stops at places like Prairie Dog Town.
Then, guess what...I spotted something large and brown walking down the road. Could it be???
It was!! And they were massive! I was a little concerned they might ram the rental so we kept a safe distance, but I got some great shots of one. He was my favorite, I named him Mike Bison. He kept giving me the eyes.
That was amazing!! But there is more to see and we are on to the next stop, Wild Canyon Trail.
We realized that this is really a great time to visit this park for several reasons, first we kind of felt like we had the whole place to ourselves, there were very few other cars around which was totally cool, but the best reason was this time of year brought out spectacular colors everywhere you looked. Yes, it was a little bit cold so we didn't hike much, but the scenery and wildlife (turkeys have special meaning in our family) we saw made it an amazing place to be. We loved our day!
