You guys! This is it. The final recap post about our July/August Road Trip. I’m excited but sad…kind of how I felt at the end of the trip: happy to get home, sad to be done with vacation.
It’s always hard leaving the mountains. We left off on Day 18 of the trip, and Louie and I had just left the Canadian Rockies. I’d been a little worried about the next segment of our trip, because we still had 4 or 5 nights left before we would be home but the most spectacular scenery was behind us. Would the rest of the trip be terribly anticlimatic and boring in comparison to all the amazing things we had already seen?
I’d decided our next stop would be Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. By all accounts neither of us had ever been to North Dakota so it seems like a good detour—and it wasn’t much of a detour. It was about 16 hours or so drive from Jasper to TRNP, but another 17 home from there no matter what, and it was about the same distance if we took another route. I made a reservation for two nights at TRNP and then we wanted to hit up the Badlands in South Dakota one more night as well (again, this added at most 1 hour of driving to our trip) since we were already so close.
Okay! So on Day 18, con’t, we just drove. We drove through Calgary, through lots of construction, and through ridiculous amounts of bugs. We killed so many bugs with our car, it was ridiculous.
The views aren’t as beautiful as Banff, but they are still very different than St Louis. The older I’ve gotten, the more I appreciate that.
We stopped in Medicine Hat (still in Alberta, Canada) for the night at a place called the HomeStay Inn. It was perfectly fine, and had a very nice bathroom IN THE ROOM, which, after 10 nights camping, was the height of luxury. We had a late dinner at a bar/restaurant called the Local in downtown Medicine Hat. Medicine Hat seemed to call itself “Gas City” because there were a lot of oil companies and such there. I’m not sure that’s something I would be so proud of, but…we did use a lot of gas on the trip so I suppose I can’t be judgy!
Day 19: We got up and had the free hotel breakfast. During breakfast the Canadian news was on and we heard a story about a wolf attack at a popular Banff campground and both sat up very straight! It seemed a wolf had attacked a family at a campground off the Icefields Parkway a few days prior. Terrifying! I remember driving by that campground and seeing the sign that it was closed, but I figured it was due to just too many bears being around (during this time of year the berries are ripe and the bears want them—in fact, evidently a grizzly bear can eat 200,000 berries in a day!).
The day was mostly driving. At one point during the morning we had to enter the United States, which was bittersweet—we had loved our time in Canada! The customs official was less nice than the the Canadian one a week prior, and gave us a hard time about forgetting that we’d bought a few beers in Canada and had those in the cooler. They don’t give you a form or anything to fill out like they do on the airplane, they just ask a few questions and then act tough. They let us back though and we continued on our way. This day we drove on quite a few small roads, but all were paved, and it was pretty scenery.
We had lunch along the way from the car, and tried to just keep going so we would get to our campground before dark. We had been spoiled with some places staying light (I’m looking at you, Jasper) until close to 10 pm and suddenly we were looking at sunset before 8 pm! We got to Medora around 6 pm and filled up on gas and ice before entering the National Park. Right away we saw a bunch of wild horses, which was a pleasant surprise!
We had a walk-in site at Cottonwood Campground, which meant there was a walk from our car to the campsite. It was a very nice site, but the walk makes set up a little more challenging. We also had to walk awkwardly close to another campsite but there wasn’t anyway around it! We set up our tent, and then decided, what the heck, let’s go back to Medora and eat dinner at a restaurant. I think we were just getting tired of cooking on the campstove and Louie was tired of camp food.
The campsite overlooked the Little Missouri River and was absolutely beautiful. The campground had decent bathrooms but not a very good place for washing dishes…another reason I was glad to not cook, ha! No showers though, and no firewood for sale though you could make a fire in the grill, so we decided to buy some in town again.
Medora is a very small cute town, with a few different restaurants, a gas station/general store, some motels, and a few other things. The park is important because Teddy Roosevelt had a ranch there before he was president, and when he was president he started the National Park Service, so really, this was where it all started.
We decided to eat dinner at what looked to be the fanciest place in town: the Rough Rider Dining Room. I had a butternut squash ravioli which was tasty but a bit too rich…I won’t say more, but it did give me some stomach issues. I probably shouldn’t have eaten so much of it! Anyway, after dinner it was already dark, so we headed slowly back to the campground (about 5 miles drive) and then made a nice fire in the firepit and relaxed for awhile before hitting the hay.
Day 20: Since it gets dark early, it also gets light early in North Dakota, and I remember waking up, thinking it was full daylight, and realizing it was not even 6 am yet. Also at 7 am some guy started singing and playing guitar at our neighboring campsite—to add insult to injury, it was an empty campsite, not his own, which in my mind meant he didn’t want to play guitar near his own traveling companions (unless he had already alienated them all and they were gone) but instead came to torture me. Luckily, shortly after that a huge storm came through so that scared everybody away and I went back to sleep for a bit. I can’t remember which day it was, but one of the mornings we heard a bunch of “whoops” from a lot of coyotes…in my sleepiness I first decided it must be a pack of prairie dogs, but then I remembered they aren’t real dogs!
Since this was the first National park we had hit up in awhile that wasn’t super crowded, we didn’t see a need to get up super early to beat the crowds, so we didn’t get going until after 10 am. The rain had stopped by then, so we figured we’d go drive the scenic road and then do some hikes along the way, nothing too intense. One of the main features of the park seems to be that at least 50 percent of the land is settled by prairie dogs. Over the course of the day, we saw a ton of the prairie dogs, wild horses, a few pronghorn, and towards the end of the day we finally saw the bison herd and had our last “bison jam” of the trip!
We visited various overlooks to the Little Missouri, watched a couple from the St Louis area ford a river, saw a bunch of amazing cool features, hiked a few miles down the Jones Creek Trail into the middle of nowhere and then hurry out to beat the rain, saw an area where there used to be a coal vein fire, and learned as much as we could about geology and the history of the area.
This was a random stop along the road.
That’s the Little Missouri River (above)
A picture with the trusty Subaru.
Wild horses couldn’t’ drag us away from Teddy Roosevelt National Park.
A really gnarly tree!
Long shot of the park. The landscape is really bizarre.
Louie got some great pictures of the prairie dogs with his zoom lens. This was one of them in the middle of a warning for the other dogs—they would kind of jump and flop into the air while making a high pitched sound. The danger was…us. There were just vast areas populated by the little dogs…would be quite annoying in your own backyard but out here, it’s amazing.
It seemed like the bison in TRNP were smaller than the bison in Yellowstone, but they still seemed to enjoy blocking the roads.
That’s a pronghorn. It’s one of the fastest animals in the world.
I’d love to show you another dozen prairie dogs, but you’ve probably seen enough! Louie and I fell in love with the little critters.
We explored the area until close to 6 pm, and then we decided we’d better get dinner…we decided to be lazy one more night and went to the Little Missouri Saloon. The bartender was also waiting tables and we felt a bit rushed and him to be a bit rude in our deciding which table to sit out, but the beer was cold and the fish and chips were hot.
After dinner, yep, you guessed it. We made a fire and relaxed.
Day 21: We packed up, and since we hadn’t gone to the Visitor’s Center yet, we stopped in on our way out of town. They had a nice shop and some nice displays.
Such as this odd wooden sculpture of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse.
Our next and last stop would be the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. As we’d been a few years ago, we were only staying a short period of time, but last time the campground in the park didn’t take reservations so we stayed elsewhere to be sure, and this time it did, so we were looking forward to staying in the park. We got to the Badlands around 3:30 and first put up our tent (always a good idea, so that you are done with that!) and took a quick tour of the campground.
Then we hit the loop road, which isn’t really a loop. We drove out to the Sage Creek Road which had been too muddy on our last visit and saw MORE prairie dogs and a couple of bison (no jam). Then we headed back and enjoyed some awesome views, and were lucky enough to see more bighorn sheep and then finally, a MALE bighorn, which we hadn’t seen on the trip.
Oh, more prairie dogs 
By the way, don’t feed them. They are still wild animals and you should never feed them.
A bison, just chilling.
Female bighorn.
A young bighorn sheep, just starting to grow horns.
Beautiful view of the badlands.
The sun was starting to set.
We almost didn’t stop at the turnout where we saw this guy—such good luck we decided to! So much of animal sightings involve luck, being fairly quiet, and moving quickly. And just being out there.
Odd thing, there was a woman getting her picture taken and playing viola at one of the stops. There were actually several parties that seemed to be doing some professional style photography, carrying light shields or whatever they are called. It was kind of strange, honestly.
It was really getting dark then, so we headed back to the campground. We decided to shower first—there were pay showers and we both felt really gross as we hadn’t showered since Medicine Hat. We showered (it was an adventure as the shower curtains didn’t quite cover the stalls, plus the water didn’t shut off until your money ran out, but you had no idea how much time was left…I showered quickly, got finished, and then had to wait a really long time, but I was afraid to like, soap up again, so I just stood there being wet and bored!), and then immediately had to put on more bug spray as the bugs were out of control. We made dinner and enjoyed the darkness. No fires are allowed in the Badlands.
Day 22: We packed up and like in TRNP, went to the visitor’s center next. We wanted to do a short hike called the Notch Trail that went up a big ladder, (which I’ve actually done three times now: once as a girl, which I forgot, and then our previous time, and now this time. Perhaps my last) and then wanted to hit the road, and maybe get back home that night.
And that was it. We finished the hike, changed our shoes, and hit the road. We stopped in Chamberlain, SD for lunch at Taco John’s, and dinner in St. Joseph, MO at Cracker Barrel (it’s become a road trip favorite). We hoped to get home but had to admit defeat near Columbia, Missouri and got a hotel. We drove the last two hours the next morning, far more refreshed and safer.
We drove about 5000 miles on the trip, and were gone over 3 weeks. It was amazing. I spent 10 months planning it, off and on, and for the most part my planning paid off. It’s nearly impossible to plan enough for these trips, and there is always a bit more I wish I’d made notes of, but really one can also just wing it. You don’t have to start planning that far in advance, but I did have to make some of my camping and lodging reservations far in advance. In January I made all of the Canada National Parks camping reservations on the first day each opened, and some places did fill up quickly. I also felt good about the sites I’d chosen, for the most part, so I was glad for that.
Our biggest issue this trip was figuring out how to deal with the luggage in the SUV, as we are new SUV people and just couldn’t get it sorted for awhile. We’ve seen people who seem to have drawers in their vehicles and have some ideas for next time, but plastic bins help a ton. We also tried traveling with a smaller cooler which mostly worked out well, but putting it behind the driver’s seat was a tight fit and ended up being a bit awkward, so we’ll need to reconsider that. Sleeping wise, having the blow up air mattress topped with a foam topper couldn’t be any more comfortable unless it were on a bedframe. I slept better on this trip than I had on any camping trip! But clothes ended up everywhere, and shoes too, and sometimes it was hard to find what you were looking for. I wished I had a nature field guide I’d forgotten to bring as well, and perhaps one guidebook I didn’t have, and a road atlas might have been a better idea than a few maps which ended up not including the area we did need once…but it all worked out.
As far as eating: we have had a two burner Coleman stove that uses propane for awhile, but this trip we also brought a one burner butane stove because it was handier. I thought we might use both, but we didn’t really need it. I liked the butane stove better because set up was much quicker and the flame could be better controlled. The Coleman is more either on high or off, which can be challenging. We do a lot of mac and cheese, or beans and couscous/rice and beans, grilled cheese with a “toast-tite” and soup, or a few other random things. We end up eating a lot of canned veggies too, and apples and string cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, and trail mix, sparkling water and beer and other sparkling beverages, and make coffee through a pour-over filter.
As far as keeping in touch and electronics charging: we have tons of car charging options, including a little device that you can plug regular plugs into. Louie would charge a battery that he would have in the tent to charge his watch overnight, and whenever we were driving places we had all kinds of things charging. We also had a free trial of Sirius XM and listened to so much classical music, a free trial of Apple Music, and made the car into a wi-fi hotspot, which sometimes worked better than our phones (ATT for the car, Sprint for the phones). It’s nice to unplug, but 3 weeks is too long, plus we were dealing with some family health concerns and wanted to be in touch in case we needed to change our plans.
So there you have it. All those National Park, all that driving, and now it’s all just a really wonderful memory. I am so grateful to have met Louie and found somebody who encourages me to explore and is willing and able to take the time to have a long road trip. We really cherished our time, and had so much fun hiking, hanging out, taking pictures, and watching wildlife. If you have any questions about planning a trip, let me know! Or suggestions about packing a car for a very long road trip!
I hope you enjoyed reading these posts. I’d love to hear from you via a comment if so. Thanks for stopping by!
