With Cloud Peak off the list, we returned to our initial plan (from before we changed it to include Cloud Peak) which had us camping at Roosevelt National Park and spending the next day there.

Consider it done.

Driving onward from White Butte we had a challenge on our hands, which was acquiring food. It seems that much of America eats before 7pm, and then restaurants close… I don’t understand.

That said, we managed to find Badlands Pizza. Good pizza. Good IPA on draft. Winner! We polished that off and headed to Roosevelt in hopes that our campsite, which we paid for in advance, wouldn’t be taken.

It wasn’t. So we unpacked and set up two tents in the dark. I was in my 12 year old Marmot 2-person, and Cooper tool the one-man ultra light that I recently acquired (and planned to return to REI, but they were out of what I wanted).

It had been a long day – we got up around 6 and had hiked and drove quite a bit. We crashed pretty quickly and slept… well I wish I could say the night. However, at around 2:05 AM I woke up to the sound of rain on the tent.

I figured it would shower lightly and pass.

No problem. I had thought about not putting the rain fly on cause it was clear as could be outside. But I did anyway just in case. Good to go. I fell asleep and woke up off and on. I thought I heard and felt some drips. Back to sleep.

Around 2:35, those drips were confirmed to be real. And there were several of them.

Nothing was soaked at this point, but I began to wonder.

At around 3am, there were still periodic drips and there was a puddle at one side of the tent. I figured this was the result of a 12 year old tent and a worn down rain fly.

I heard Cooper moving around and asked him how he was doing. Taking on some water but good.

The rain doesn’t let up, and ten minutes later we’ve emptied the tents of our stuff and have piled into the car. We slept in there from 3-6, but it was definitely less than awesome. Around 6, the rain paused so we packed up the ultralight tent, discarded the 12 year old Marmot in the trash (goodbye old friend), and headed out.

We picked up breakfast and coffee in Madora right outside of the park, and then headed back in to drive around and explore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt National Park is named for Teddy, the former US President, who spent a good bit of time in these lands after some personal tragedy, when he lost both his wife and mother on February 14th. The cabin he stayed in sits right behind the visitor center. Word has it that Teddy might have come west just to bolster his “tough guy” image and become a man of the common people. Whatever the reason, he was a catalyst for land conservation in the United States, which I am greatly appreciative of.

The park is divided into two units, a north and south, which are separated by about 68 miles of road. The Maah Dah Hey trail crosses between the two, and is apparently epic mountain biking. We considered riding but logistics were challenging. The rain would have ruined it anyway, as the dirt turns to a cement like mud when wet. We visited both the South and North units.

On the way back into the park from breakfast, we ran across this guy on the side of the road. He was BIG, but didn’t seem too interested in us or our vehicle.

We wanted to hike through the park some as it really seemed to have a lot of unique character, but the rain made that too challenging. Everything was extremely muddy. So we settled to drive and hop out for some occasional pictures.

We saw a lot of wildlife in our short time in the park, including a significant number of buffalo. Prior to American westward expansion, there were literally millions of buffalo roaming the midwest. Unfortunately, they were nearly hunted to extinction. They have now been successfully reintroduced to the park, but have to be managed closely. There were calves in this heard, so that’s a good sign.

Why Roosevelt was amazing to me is really hard to put into words, but the fact that it is massive in size and remote must have contributed. It was not the most picturesque place I have ever been, but it made me want to spend more time there. When I return to the Dakotas in the future, the two places I would definitely revisit are Roosevelt and Custer State Park (more on that later).

I mentioned wildlife… there were wild horses in the park as well. We had a… what do you call a group of horses?.. a group of horses pass us as well.

In case the above caption doesn’t make sense to you…

You’re welcome.

This is the cannonball area in the north unit, which has a number of really interesting rock formations.

 

 

 

After Roosevelt we made the long drive back to Rapid City to stay the night. We grabbed dinner at Boston’s (a chain, but good) and watched the first half of the Texas vs Notre Dame game.

Sunday in the books and Labor Day to go. Read more about those in the next post.