We awoke to a rain storm this morning. It was fairly light, just enough to cool the air and suppress the insects a bit. We packed lunches and headed to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. There is no question that Western North Dakota is in an oil boom. Giant semis ripped up US-85 in both directions, delivering equipment and holding tanks that looked like missile fuselages. Pumps, which outnumbered farm houses, bobbed their steel horse-heads up and down.
People who are not from the Midwest talk about how flat the land is across the prairie whether talking about Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa or the Dakotas. They call them the flyover states. Nothing to see, they say. Boring. But it’s the sky that holds so much of the beauty. Our drive beneath great billowy clouds that moseyed across the blue sky like herds of white cows, moving slowly and uniformly, told us of approaching rain and gave the boys, who have grown up entirely in the Bay Area, something new to see.
The drive through the North Unit was virtually empty. We didn’t expect it to be busy on the Monday following Independence Day weekend, but it was a surprise just how quiet it was. Most of our afternoon, we saw hardly a car – no tour buses, no vans full of kids and grandparents. Just us.
The two-lane road through the park runs along the valleys and ridges and ends about 14 miles in with a small turnaround. We drove it slowly, pausing frequently to admire the yellow sweetclover and creeping Jenny that covered the prairie, the boxelder, juniper, elm and cottonwood trees, and convoluted gullies and ravines of rust, cream and slate-colored layers of rock that rose steeply along the meandering Little Missouri River. We saw a coyote that scurried across the road and disappeared into the grasses. And we saw a small group of bison about five miles into the park and a large bull grazing alone atop a point overlooking the valley as we enjoyed our lunch.
On our drive back, we pushed along US-85 with the oil trucks and caught up with the trailing edge of a nasty thunderstorm that made driving dangerous. We eventually pulled off to let it get further ahead.
