Dells & Teddy Roosevelt NP

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Wisconsin Dells

Day 1 – July 10

Drove 505 miles.

We left South Haven, Michigan at 10:30 am. Attempted meeting Em’s friend Rachel in Rockford, IL, but timing didn’t work, so we drove straight through Illinois into Wisconsin.

We drove through the Wisconsin Dells. It is much like Niagara Falls, tourist-kitschy but much larger in scope. Among the many eye-catching attractions on the main strip, we saw the ”world’s largest flamingo”, Big Foot, a Roman Colosseum hotel, and a massive Trojan Horse (most of which were highlighted on our Roadside Attractions app).

We pulled into the parking lot of the Lower Dells Docks right on the Wisconsin River.  This was our base. We bought tickets for a boat tour of the Upper Dells at ticket kiosk in the parking lot.  We took the shuttle to the very busy town center which was less than a mile away. Took in the touristy traps for a bit,

and then we walked the serene, off-the-boardwalk respite River Walk, and then we got on board the 4:30 pm Upper Dells Boat Tour. This was a very good 2-hour narrated boat tour of the Upper Dells on the Wisconsin River. We sat on the upper deck of the boat, and considering this was our first major trip without our kids, we sat as far away as we could from the family with 5 small children…3 crying at any given point. We alternatively envied and pitied the parents.

The tour stopped for short hikes at Witches Gulch, and Stand Rock. Witches Gulch was like walking the paths of Lost River or Polar Caves in the White Mountains….lush, rocky, and beautiful.

Stand Rock was a formation made famous for being the backdrop of the first ever stop-action photo taken, of a boy leaping onto the top of a tall stack-like rock formation by his father H.H. Bennett, the Ansel Adams of Wisconsin. The tour included a quick show of a dog replicating that same leap, as we viewed from the bottom of “Stand Rock”. The dog lived. In spite of the lame dog show, this is a recommended boat tour as the Dells provided plenty of beautiful vistas of very cool rock formations along the banks.

After we got off the boat we waited about 15 minutes for a shuttle bus back to our car, and then decided to just walk the 3/4 miles.  Once at the lot where our car was, we indulged in awesome root beer floats from the Daily Scoop, which was right next to the boat tour ticket kiosk, and our own turkey sandwiches. We ate at a picnic table by the boat tour parking lot overlooking the Wisconsin River. Then we headed toward La Crosse, WI with no plan for where to stay, except that we would not be camping due to possible thunderstorms overnight. We passed the Giant Mouse with Cheese statue that we discovered via the Offbeat Roadside Attractions app. As noted in the introduction post for this road trip, this app identifies roadside oddities, and we stopped at many throughout the trip.

I found a motel via the iPad in Spring Valley, WI, about 30 minutes west of the Mississippi River at La Crosse.  The GPS took us through narrow, dark country farm roads with no street lights…one two-mile road wasn’t even paved and it was basically a roller coaster dirt road along farm land….not a good place to break down. We went through Wykoff, MN, population 444 and finally got to our America’s Best Value motel around 10:30 pm.  It was a perfectly fine motel. Em realized, as we entered the town that she had been to Spring Valley before when she and Sz took their Little House on the Prairie tour about 10 years ago…and stayed in the very same motel!

Spring Valley to Blue Earth, MN

Day 2 – July 11

Drove 500 miles

Woke up in Spring Valley, MN, had continental breakfast at motel, and got on the road. We first followed Offbeat Attractions and visited a chainsaw sculpture of the 3 Stooges playing golf in somebody’s back yard, and the A&W Root Beer guy holding a root beer and hamburger statue at an A&W restaurant in Spring Valley.  Spring Valley is a beautiful little town.

We took I90 west across southern Minnesota into South Dakota to avoid both severe weather in mid-Minnesota and the civil unrest (Black Lives Matter) going on in Minneapolis/St. Paul, so our plan changed a bit, there. We had planned to see the Twin cities on route to Fargo, North Dakota. We saw bison off the side of the highway.

Following Offbeat Attractions, we stopped in Blue Earth, MN to see the 60’ tall Jolly Green Giant statue and the Green Giant museum down town (these ironically are not related). Both were fun stops. We then had lunch at an outdoor bbq stand in a supermarket parking lot per recommendation from a volunteer worker at the Green Giant museum. Excellent pork burger and cheeseburger. We chatted with some locals at the picnic table. They were very nice and wanted to make it very clear to us that they were not “hicks” and had travelled a lot in their life….interesting.

Just outside of town on the highway we pulled over to see the “Golden Stripe” in the pavement of the highway. It represents the spot where the east bound pavers of the original I90 paving met the west bound pavers. Though it now is just the shoulder that is painted gold on both sides of the highway.

We detoured briefly in Welcome, MN off of I90 to see a unique large cast iron drinking fountain built in 1919. The side facing the sidewalk was for people, and the one facing the street for horses (Offbeat Attractions). Otherwise, Welcome is a dreary little town.

Then we stopped at Pipestone National Monument in Pipestone, South Dakota. This was a very cool monument that includes a short trail encircling prairie, a waterfall, and quarries mined by Native Americans to extract pipestone rock, which is much like carvable clay. The Native Americans carved, and still carve, art and mainly peace pipes from the rock, hence “pipestone”. We spoke with a couple of Native Americans who were sculpting inside the Visitor’s Center….very nice guys. Nice short hike with beautiful landscape, a waterfall and a fast flowing stream amongst the active and non-active small, individual size quarry sites.

Then off to Fargo to spend the night. Somehow we avoided severe thunderstorms and tornadoes all around us…just lucked out. We drove briefly through downtown Fargo and spent the night at a Travelodge in Mooreheard, the sister city of Fargo, but in MN. Downtown hotels in Fargo were way too pricey. Got in the hotel parking lot around 9:00 pm, and then it immediately started to downpour. We stayed in the motel for the night and did laundry, since we had the chance to do so.

Teddy Roosevelt National Park

Day 3 – July 12

Drove 340 miles

Woke up for a continental breakfast at the motel, and drove to the Fargo Welcome Center where we saw and posed with the real wood chipper prop used in the movie “Fargo”.

Very cool. We spoke with a very friendly visitor center employee who made recommendations for us as we headed west toward Teddy Roosevelt National Park. Most importantly, she also recommended a good coffee place for us!

Along the highway, we saw a bald eagle sitting atop a hay roll. This turned out to be the only bald eagle we would see on the whole trip. First stop was Frontier Village/National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown, ND. There, we saw a white buffalo in the captive heard, walked through a small replica pioneer settlement town with saloon, and saw the world’s largest buffalo monument (60 tons).

 

Next stop was Bismarck, to check out the State Capitol building.  We did that in just about every state from this point on.  We realized that American state capitol buildings are the equivalent of European churches in terms of how they represent statements of culture via ornate and amazingly detailed architecture.  Then further up i94 just past Bismarck we stopped in Mandan to visit Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. Here we started with a guided tour of Gen. Custer’s house at Fort Abraham Lincoln. This was a very good tour given by a young cavalry soldier in period costume.  Then we saw the “On-a-Slant Indian Village” on the fort grounds. This was a small village of Mandan Native Americans who built their earth lodge homes and other buildings on a slanted hillside. The mud and wood beam homes looked like giant anthills with an opening for a door and a hole in the top for the fire smoke to escape.  Then we went onto the cavalry post to see the reconstructed infantry blockhouses high on a bluff. Picture a wide lookout tower from the cavalry days.  We climbed one of them and it was very, very windy on the plains that day so we really had to hold on for life…but gorgeous vistas of the prairie all around.

Then onto New Salem, ND where we saw Salem-Sue, the world’s largest Holstein cow statue high on a hill overlooking the road (Offbeat Attractions app).

Then on toward Teddy Roosevelt National Park.  The first thing we got to, before entering the Park in Medora was the Visitors Center and scenic overlook of the Painted Canyon. This first vista of the Park was magnificent.  Looked like the Grand Canyon.  Stayed here for only about 10 minutes since we planned on coming back the next day to hike the Painted Canyon Trail.  Ten minutes up the highway we got into Medora, home of Teddy Roosevelt National Park around 6:30 pm. We presented our annual pass to the ranger at the entrance to the park, and off to our campsite.

Cottonwood Campground was 4 miles into the park, and right on the Little Missouri River. Our National Parks Pass provided 50% off on the campsite fee.  No electric hookups or showers here, but nicely maintained with fairly clean restrooms. On the way to the campground, where we had reservations for two nights, we passed a prairie dog town in the park.  Hundreds of prairie dogs and holes on both sides of the park road. The prairie dogs were very active, entertaining, and just really cute.

Our campsite was breathtaking, right on the river with views of grassland and red and white rocky hills and formations.

The wind was blowing at about 25 miles per hour, but we somehow got our tent up anyway….I’m sure we provided some good entertainment for fellow campers as we put it up. Once up, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the rocky skyline from our site. We opened our bottle of 2008 Shafer Merlot to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary (which was actually the next day, but we had no beer with us due to poor planning so decided to open our wine). We used our new stargazing app to help navigate the beautiful sky and then off to bed around midnight. Dean heard coyotes howling in the very early morning hours! Our first tenting night was very comfortable. We used the LLBean 6-person tent (which means it sleeps 3 comfortably) and slept on a full sized air mattress on top of a couple of air pads.

Teddy Roosevelt National Park South Unit

Day 4 – July 13

Drove 80 miles around the park and Medora.

We woke up in our tent and boiled some water on the Coleman stove for coffee and ate quick food for breakfast and made our way to the South Unit’s 32 mile “Scenic Loop Drive”, and the various fairly short hiking trails.

We didn’t need our backpacks. The weather was great. Breathtaking scenery and vistas all along the loop. We hiked Wind Canyon Trail, Boicourt Trail, and Ridgeline Trail. We also stopped at many vistas. They were all short hikes…our favorite trail was Boicourt.

We didn’t see this trail on our Chimani app or the park guide…it was just listed as an overlook here. But it looked like a good, fairly short trail to take a hike on. We went beyond the official end of the trail on a narrower but still beaten trail onto a precarious point overlooking the canyon and saw about 150 yards away a huge, lighter skinned bison standing alone on a plateau.  He was quite majestic. Also saw a small herd of buffalo further in the distance from here. A bit of a dangerous hike, with strong winds, but exhilarating, well worth it.  Ridgeline Trail was also pretty dangerous, it is aptly named.  We also hiked up Buck Hill to the highest point in the park. We hiked a total of 4 miles along the loop.

We then went over to the Painted Canyon to hike the 4 mile back and forth Painted Canyon Trail. We definitely took our backpacks, full of water, with us. We had a hard time finding the trailhead, and actually hiked about .1 of a mile down the wrong path before turning back. We finally found the trailhead about .2 miles down the road from the Visitor’s Center parking lot.

This was a very steep climb, to start, since we were heading down into the canyon. It was a beautiful, challenging hike, with no other people, that rewarded us with a sighting of a lone bison about 50 yards from us. We were hoping to come across bison, but once we did, we looked at each other wide-eyed and slowly realized that we were pretty vulnerable if it decided to charge us. We got a bit nervous…classic example of “be careful what you wish for”. But, it was very fun. We turned around at that point and headed up out of the canyon.  We were pretty beat by now, as it was hot, and headed back to the South Unit to watch the sunset, and look for elk at Wind Canyon. We still didn’t see any elk, and the sunset was a bit cloudy, but still beautiful. On our way back to the campsite, Emilie spotted a coyote roaming the cliff side.  We also noticed that the prairie dog towns were inactive…seems the dogs all were in bed…unfortunate for the coyote.  We got back to the camp site around 9:00 pm and found out that a bison had walked right through our campground a couple of hours earlier. We saw a bison on the side of the road near the access road to the campground, so we figured it was probably that one. Along the scenic loop drive this day we saw several small herds of wild horses. Some blocking the road.

Also sporadic lone bison here and there. All in all, this day we saw wild bison, horses, prairie dogs, antelope, a jack-rabbit and a coyote.

We boiled some water on the Coleman and had cup o noodles and soup for dinner, had a couple of beers and went to sleep.

Teddy Roosevelt National Park North Unit

Day 5 – July 14

Drove 160 miles

Before Emilie woke, I got up around 6:30 am to sit outside and hopefully see elk drinking at the river, but no luck.  We did hear coyotes again though from our tent real early in the morning. Had some coffee and quick breakfast at the campsite and folded up camp to head toward Medora to tool around town for an hour. Medora is a very small, quaint town with an old west feel to it. We stopped to get some coffee in a small shop and had a nice chat with the owner, and then we were greeted on the street by “Teddy and Mrs. Roosevelt” in period clothes. We stopped to quickly tour the Rough Riders Hotel….very, very nice, seemed like the only thing “Rough” about it was likely the bill.  A fun, small, touristy town.

Off to the Park’s North Unit 16 mile scenic drive about 30 minutes away. Immediately after stopping at the Visitor’s Center of the North Unit we drove right past a bison walking alongside the road.

We decided to drive out to the end of the scenic drive, which is not a loop like the South Unit, and hit trails on the way back. Along the way we saw a couple more lone bison. We saw no wild horses in the North Unit. We did stop at some overlooks on the way out to the end of the drive, which was Oxbow Overlook. Here we hiked beyond official overlook sites and got some cool vistas, but managed to get ourselves into a short, very challenging steep slope of a barely beaten path. We then hiked an official trail here called the Sperati Point trail.  This was a fairly easy hike of about 2.4 miles total. At the end of the trail, at the Point there was a spectacular view including the Little Missouri River (Little Mo).

Spectacular vistas abound in the North Unit. At the Point, just about 10 yards down an overhang at the viewpoint was a lone bull bison resting. He looked up at us but did not get up…he could not be seen until we were right on top of him…very awesome, but also a bit scary.

On the route back we hiked 1.2 miles of the Caprock Coulee trail hoping to see bighorn sheep. We tried to find bighorn sheep all along the North Unit but saw none. However on the scenic drive about halfway out we were met by a herd of about 60 bison in and alongside the road! We stopped and watched as the herd went right through us.  If you don’t find them, the bison find you!

 

With all of the great hiking, scenery, and wildlife viewing already, this was the highlight of our visit to Teddy Roosevelt Park. The North Unit definitely had more bison to offer, and prairie like hikes.  The South Unit offered wildlife as well, but it was the Badland canyon scenery of its hikes that was the best thing about it.

We drove north from the North Unit to head towards Glacier National Park. Spent the night at the decent Microtel in Williston, ND.  We had a bbq dinner at Famous Dave’s. Our waitress, like Emilie, was from Michigan. Did laundry at the Microtel, and off to bed.

 

Next: Glacier National Park