Visited: Aug 2018
Nearby town: Watford City, ND
Shortly after Tara and I got married, we visited the South Unit of this National Park. Here is the link to the post of our visit to the South Unit.
The North Unit is about an hour's drive from Medora and the South Unit. It is well worth a visit. The main road runs along the Little Missouri River and then climbs the plateau for spectacular vistas of the surrounding countryside. The closest town to the North Unit is Watford City. Because of its proximity to the Bakken Field, the city is experiencing quite the oil boom. In the 2010 census, Watford City's population was about 1,700. It is now over 7,000 today! The town can't quite keep up with the development. We stayed in a brand new Holiday Inn hotel that looked like a skyscraper, and was obvious built solely for oil field workers. It was a nice hotel, but we had to traverse a muddy, dirt, unpaved, rough road to get to the entrance! 😊
This land was where Theodore Roosevelt ranched and lived the rough life of the Wild West after the death of his first wife and death of his mother (they both tragically passed away on the same day). Theodore Roosevelt's love of the outdoors was greatly enhanced during his time here and led him to champion conservation causes as President. Roosevelt often stated that if it weren't for the time he spent here in North Dakota, he would never have become President.
The badlands here are much more dramatic than the South Unit. Enjoy the scenic drive.
The road climbs up the plateau. Make sure to stop at the River Bend Overlook and the Oxbow Overlook. From the Oxbow Overlook (where the scenic road ends), you can hike to Sperati Point. It's a 2.4 mile round trip hike. We didn't have time to hike, but we made sure to stop at the overlooks and take in the views. It was a hazy day (there had been a lot of forest fires in Canada and the smoke had blown down, but the views were still pretty good).
We also stopped at the Cannonball concretions (badlands that have been eroded away to form spherical boulders) and took a small nature trail that took us to the banks of the Little Missouri River.
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| Cannonball Concretion is an amazing work of nature |
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| Little Missouri River |
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| some big longhorns hanging out by the river |
We were also treated to a bison traffic jam! 😁 I love these beautiful majestic creatures.
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| Tara snapped the picture just a bit too late, but you can see the back end of the bison walking in front of the car in front of us. It was huge! It was practically bigger than the car! |
Both the North and South Units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park are well worth a visit. For more info: https://www.nps.gov/thro/index.htm
