A Medora Christmas

I have to admit, I was a little bummed to find out that I had to spend my Christmas in Medora, ND this year - no one around, not a whole lot to do. However, there are some fantastic things that happen in Medora around Christmas time - here are just two:

Cowboy Christmas
Back on December 5th & 6th, we got to experience our very first "Cowboy Christmas". It's a two-day celebration that includes everything from Christmas Dinners & Dances to a Fowl Fling (I never did find out what that was...). Starting Friday night, there are a whole series of events and we went to just a couple of them.

Chowder @ the Cowboy Cafe - None of the restaurants in Medora are open, so when we found out that the Cowboy Cafe - literally 20 feet behind our apartment - was going to have an Oyster Chowder night, we were there. It's always pretty comical to walk into a room of native Medorans. No one really knows who you are and this room seemed to have an unspoken rule that if you didn't have gray hair, you weren't allow. Of course that not true - everyone is really friendly and the dinner of chowder, a sandwich, and tiny cheesecake bite was pretty good! We opted not to go to the Cowboy Christmas Jamboree, which took place both Friday and Saturday nights.

Eats on the Streets - The next day was the main event and we started off by participating in Eats on the Streets. The whole town opens up for three hours and everyone serves homemade food & treats. On the menu was pulled pork sandwiches and cookies at the Schaeffer Heritage Center, Bison Chili at Woolly Boys Saloon, and some BBQ sausages & corn on the cob at the Cowboy Hall of Fame. We had to quit early since Nathan had to go back to work - but never fear, the Visitor's Center was participating as well with cheese, crackers, and olives. If you're thinking of coming to Medora in the winter, I would recommend timing it to coincide with Eats on the Streets.

Fireworks - Saturday night there was another dinner, a mass, a jamboree, some other events, and finally everything was topped off by some fireworks. Not just any fireworks, though - fireworks shot off the bluff right next to our apartment! Just when the show was about to start, it began to snow. It was beautiful - snow fireworks against the bluffs with a couple of misfires lighting tiny fires in the backyard. You can't beat that!



Audubon's Annual Christmas Bird Count
On Sunday we did something really stupid - we braved the -40 degree wind chills, hopped in the a Durango, and headed to the closed loop road to count birds. The Audubon Christmas Bird Count is over 100 years old, making it the longest-running Citizen's Science project in the world (I'm not kidding, check out the full press release here)!

Nathan has been excited for this for weeks, so a little cold weather wasn't going to hold him back! However, it did hold back the birds. Along an entire stretch of the 36-mile loop road we saw 16 birds - that's it!! The most exciting of which were a Golden Eagle and a Falcon-thing we didn't fully identify. We, however, did see a lot more mammals than birds - bison, deer, very close elk, and a group of around 60 pronghorns (which I've never actually seen in the park), made the trip totally worth the frost bite and finger amputations.