Hiking Challenge - Day 4 & 5

It's been raining and snowing for the past two days, so I've been relegated to "hiking" in town to avoid getting stuck in the mud. For two nights in a row I took a few walks around Medora. Medora is about 4 x 6 blocks of shops, restaurants, hotels, and a couple of houses sprinkled here and there. As it's almost May, the town has started to wake up a bit. Delivery trucks are making their way into town, some shops have lights on, and even a few places like James Gang Java are open for lunch three days a week! That's biggest news we've had around here since the ice broke on the river!


It really hasn't sunk in yet that I won't be living in Medora after next week. Although, a piece of me must know as I felt compelled to take pictures of everything.

First, there's the thing that brought us here in the first place: Theodore Roosevelt National Park.


Next is the Post Office: the gathering place - where you can find five cars at any given minute during your lunch hour, after not seeing any cars for a week from your front window.

Right down the block, past the horrifying mass of construction formerly known as the Rough Rider Hotel, is the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame. Extremely boring if you're not into cowboys, the history of saddles, or Miss North Dakota. However, you are reading the picture correctly - it was the 2007 North Dakota Tourist Attraction of the Year, so come on down!


Go another block and you'll hit Chimney Park, home to the meat packing plant that put Medora on the map thanks to the Marquis de Mores.

If you walk three more blocks to the other side of town, you'll hit the Iron Horse, the only restaurant/bar open year round. They've had some violations, hence the (I'm sure snide) French comment on their sign alongside the names of every cop in Western North Dakota. I'll always look back on it with fond memories of it as the scene of Dan & Jen's Wedding Reception this February.


Last but not least the Medora Musical Amphitheater. Carved into the side of a bluff at the edge of town, this theater attracts 3,000 people almost every night to see the famous Medora Musical. I had a blast at it last year, but, alas, will not be sticking around long enough to see the college-age actors clogging it up this year.

Hiking Challenge - Day 3

Today we inadvertently blazed a new trail. Well, new for humans anyway. On the map that Nathan has there is a little loop trail on the East side of the park that starts next to the bison round-up pen in which Nathan spent four days wrangling bison in November. When we got there, no trail could be found, so we started down a deer/elk trail and went with the flow.

Bison Round-Up Enclosure

We ended up walking along a plateau right at the edge of prairie grasslands and badlands, scaring four elk out of the brush as we descended down a bluff and into an otherworldly habitat.

Canonball Concretion

I love walking off-trail and often wondered if in the place I last took a step I am the first human being to ever step there. I've only had that feeling once before when we lost the trail climbing Reynolds at Glacier and ended up scrambling up an unmarked side.


These tiny sticks looked like they were fighting. We also saw some deer, but no mountain lions or rattle snakes like I was hoping. It's pretty easy to hike off-trail in Theodore Roosevelt because, as Nathan points out, if you just walk far enough, you're sure to hit a fence or a road.

Afterwards we decided to drive into Belfield and eat at the Trapper's Kettle, which I mentioned back in February.

Hiking Challenge - Day 2

Nathan refused to get his shoes muddy so we ended up hiking in the campground today. We actually went farther than we thought we would due to the bison herd hanging out near our car.

We did see one deer.....but it was dead.


We also saw an Eagle hunting in the prairie dog town. All-in-all a pretty nice hike.

Hiking Challenge - Day 1

Nathan finally accepted a job at Pipestone National Monument in Pipestone, MN. This is a fantastic deal for us because Pipestone, MN is about 3.5 hours from our house, which means Nathan will be home on weekends. I was really excited until I started to realize that I wouldn't get to spend the summer in Glacier. Chief on my list is all of the great hiking I'll miss. Pipestone has one nature trail, but it is only 3/4 of a mile long and not nearly scenic enough to satisfy my spoiled appetite for mountain passes and grizzly bears. So, to get it all out of my system, I decided that I would have to take advantage of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. And so, every day for the next two weeks that I'm here, I am going to hike.

I got up this morning excited for my first hike only to find out that it was...snowing. Oh well, nothing was going to stop me from getting my hike on, so I packed an extra pair of pants, pulled on my signature Wisconsin hat and headed off. I decided to start out on the Painted Canyon Trail and then continue up the Upper Paddock Creek Trail before turning around.



Nathan and everyone else in our building was working, so I had to hike solo. There are only four things that worry me about hiking alone here in Theodore Roosevelt (as opposed to the four things that worry me in Glacier: bears, bears, bears, and bears). In Glacier, I wouldn't even consider going out alone, but here, the chances of something eating me are slim to none. There are still a few things that made me think twice:

1. A Bison Trampling - I've met them out on the trails before - just give 'em enough room and they don't bother you.
2. Rattlesnakes - I've never seen one, but apparently last year's training session included the interns being a little closer than they'd anticipated on their first day.
3. Ticks - They're everywhere, but Nathan tends to invite them in and finds them in his sheets, on his computer monitor, and who knows where else so I've had enough experience with them.
4. Mountain Lions - Not that scary, until you come across a bone right at the head of the trail like I did today that sends your mind racing:
   

I figured, though, with it being a "beautiful" spring day, that lions have plenty of other delicious baby animals to gnaw on besides me. The hike was wet, but incredible. I ended up walking a little over 5 miles in 2.5 hours - a lot shorter than I'd wanted, but the going was slow due to all the MUD.


It was great, though. The trail descended right away and got out of the wind, but not out of the snow. It was pretty sad watching me try to move along the trail, giant clobs of mud weighing me down until I decided to give up and just walk in the grass near the trail. I passed several, purple Pasque flowers, the only ones up in Theodore Roosevelt to date.


I was having fun not seeing any animals, until, suddenly, I saw two wild horses running just in front of me. My new favorite, a white one, split off from her buddy and to my surprise, started to run right at me!

She did this several times to check me out and kept watching me. Although one of the Rangers thought she may have had a colt hidden somewhere, I really felt like she was just curious and then a bit like she was watching out for me; making sure the invisible mountain lion I couldn't detect stayed away, perhaps?

Noah's Ark

While these Theodore Roosevelt ungulates are enjoying the new spring grasses, the rest of the state of North Dakota is not so high and dry.




Everyone has heard of the Fargo flooding, but did you know that the rest of the state is underwater too? As I was driving yesterday, all day I'd see little pockets of former farmland-turned-ocean like this one - its waves slowly creeping to the road and lapping at its eroding edges.


At one point, it didn't just stop at the edges, instead I-94 became a shallow water funland.



I decided, since I've been kicking myself ever since I drove by two weeks ago, that I would exit and check out the Red River in Fargo. I was surprised to see that the Maple River, which I cross before entering Fargo, was HIGHER than when I last crossed - instead of being less than a foot away from the steel tresses of a neighboring bridge, it was half-way up them! The flooding from THAT river in the roadside ditches went on for miles.

I got off the freeway when I started to see makeshift dirt dikes again. To actually see the river this time I had to drive two blocks into one of the most affected neighborhoods. The street closest to the river had a giant pile of dirt right down the middle. On one side, the houses appeared to be fine, except for the sandbag piles protecting their lower two feet.



...but on the other side...



I was having flashbacks to the year we had 3.5 feet of water in our basement thanks to the Great Brown Deer Flood of '97.

I walked a little farther and found a closed Gooseberry Park. I didn't see any boats, any animals marching two by two, and for that matter, any people, the whole time I was back in this neighborhood. Seems they've given up for now, silently poised for the second crest of the Red River coming this week and waiting for those storm clouds to finally clear up!

Food, Glorious Food

A few months ago, the movie Fast Food Nation arrived in our mailbox. A fictional version of the book, which is far superior, its final scene of the grotesque killing floor of a beef processing plant in Colorado made Nathan and I decide that we would try to eat less meat from then on.

We were already trying to eat better meat. We only buy cage-free chicken eggs and try to find grass-fed beef and hormone-free chicken whenever possible. I have nothing against eating meat, it's GOOOOOD, but it seems my gut could benefit from some more natural products and the environment definitely could too.

Luckily, a lot of people up here at the park are vegetarians, so they're full of good advice. Nathan's supervisor suggested the Moosewood Restaurant Cookbooks, so we bought one and it arrived a couple weeks ago.

All I have to say is WOW! We've tried two recipes this week and both were fantastic! The first was African Pineapple Peanut Stew. I picked this one because it sounded like something out of Buraka (my favorite Madison, WI restaurant), but crazier. The ingredients include Kale, pineapple, peanut butter, and Tabasco sauce, which sound contradictory, but boy was that ever one of the best dishes I've made myself! Wish I had taken a picture, but luckily someone else from a blog called Fat Free Vegan Kitchen already did:


For lunch today, I made the Tomato Garlic Soup with Tortellini, also fabulous. Again, I failed to take a photo, but ours looks a lot like this picture from the Dispensing Happiness blog! Hmmm, it seems people really like to post pictures of meals they've had online. What could be so exciting about that? :)


Anyway, I'm looking forward to trying the Sweet Potato Quesadillas and Pasta Fresca later this week. Look out Dinner Club because I think your next meal is coming with a peel, not a squeal!

No Foolin'

April in North Dakota....