We made three brief stops after leaving Glacier on our way back East. One of the strategies we try to employ as we eat up large chunks of miles is to stop somewhere interesting. We keep moving toward our ultimate destination, but yet we break up the monotony that can come from long hours in the car. Plus, this is a big country. There are a lot of excellent places to see. If you fly you only get to see the big ones. Car travel allows you to see more of our country's small gems.
One of our stops was at First People's Buffalo Jump State Park. This is the largest buffalo jump used by the ancient peoples (before the horse). We learned a lot from a wonderful Native American ranger. The ingenuity of the early people and their cooperative living and working was amazing.
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| The boy plays the part of the brave pretending to be a wolf to scare the buffalo. |
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| The cliff from the bottom. |
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| Bone fragment from an ancient buffalo. |
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| The top of the cliff. |
Not much to see here, and the campground wasn't much either, but it was amazing to stand in the same spot where Sacagawea was captured, and where Lewis and Clark camped. We were a bit distracted when we got here because we discovered that our trailer and car tires were in really bad shape. Of course, it was the weekend, and we had a lot of mile to cover before we could find a place to get new tires. It was also the last night with my parents, so we were losing a bit of our saftey net in case of an emergency. This trip is the only time I was ever thankful for Super Walmarts. Their auto repair shops are open every day. It took us traveling half-way across Montana, and two different shops, and incorrect work, and five hours of waiting in Wal-marts, but we got safely back on the road. Stressful indeed.
We love badlands, and we were working to avoid motorcycle traffic from the Sturgis Motorcycle rally in South Dakota. So, we headed to North Dakota to Teddy Roosevelt. It was rainy while we were there, but we still enjoyed the excellent campground among beautiful cottonwoods (great ranger program), beautiful wide open scenery and colors and close encounters with buffalo herds.
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| You just don't get views like this in the East. |
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| We sat waiting for this herd to move for a long time. I love this kind of traffic. |
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