You can’t come to North Dakota without hearing about or seeing the influence the President Theodore Roosevelt had on the state and the infuence the Dakotas had on him. He arrived in the badlands of North Dakota in 1883. He was only 24 years old then and he fell in love with the badlands of the Little Missouri River Valley. He threw himself into Badlands life – stopping stampedes, punching out a drunken gunslinger in a bar, and helping to organize the region’s first stockmen’s association. In Dakota Territory Roosevelt was transformed into the man who became the 26th President of the United States. North Dakota has adopted him as their own and you can hardly turn a corner without stumbling on a Roosevelt Street, or a Roosevelt Bar or a statue of him. Of course the biggest place in the state that honours his memory is Theodore Roosevelt National Park..but more about that later!
We left Grand Forks bright and early and , shunning the interstate, we decided to head west along the old Highway 10, which is now promoted as the “Old Red/Old Ten Scenic Byway”. It was such a good decision! We pretty much had the road to ourselves instead of dodging trucks as we would have done in the interstate. Being on the smaller road also brings you in much closer contact with the scenery and the little towns.
There were a couple of special sights that we stopped to see along the way. The biggest ( and the Biggest of all the Big Things we’ve seen so far!) was Salem Sue, the World’s Largest Cow. She is a queen of all things big, and the locals say you can see her mighty silhouette from neighboring counties on a clear day . We could certainly see her from a long way off!
We drove up the hill to take a closer look at her after dropping a dollar in the donation box.
Neil doing the milking! 
Number 1 in Bigness! 😂
We carried on down the Old Ten and at Richardson came across the Assumption Abbey – a Benedictine Monastery which is reputed to have lovely stained glass windows as well as its tall gothic towers. However, Neil is still recovering from all the “Old Churches” we saw in Europe last year so wasn’t keen on going inside. 😂
Towards the end of the Old Ten, we switched direction southwards and also switched Scenic Byways – this time we toured the “Enchanted Highway”. This one is the work of one man! Thirty miles south of the nearest major highway, the town of Regent was dying, and Gary Greff decided someone had to do something about it. A metal sculptor and retired school teacher, Gary started the work in 1990. His master plan was to create ten giant sculptures, one every few miles along Regency-Gladstone Road.Seven have been completed so far and an additional sculpture towers over I-94, at the start of the Enchanted Highway – “Geese in Flight” went up in 2001, and it is claimed to be the World’s Largest Outdoor Sculpture.
We drove down the highway, stopping at each sculpture, a bit gobsmacked at the size of them.. and really enchanted at the creativity! My favourite was the “Grasshoppers in the Field”. The wind had been blowing fiercey all morning, but it was a little more sheltered at the Grasshoppers so Neil gave the drone a spin, I haven’t seen the footage yet but I think it will be good.
At the end of the Highway we stopped in to the little Enchanted Gift shop in Regent, and we both bought something for our collections – I picked up a Christmas decoration of the Grasshoppers and Neil bought a magnet of his favourite, The Geese in Flights. They had one more cute metal artwork here, a set of whirlygigs beside the shop that danced and jiggled when you pressed the button.
From Regent we headed back north to rejoin I94 but we stopped briefly at a riverside park to have our coffee and muffins – the wind was too cold to eat outdoors today so we had our picnic in the car.
Westward Ho! – to our big destination for the next couple of days -Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The Park is divided into two “Units”, the North and South Unit are about 68 miles apart but the main draw for visitors is the South Unit. The entrance is in the little tourist town of Medora, and I’d booked us into the AmericInn Hotel. We had gained an hour heading west as this part of North Dakota is on Mountain Time so it was too early to check in; so we stopped first at the Painted Canyon viewpoint which is just off the Interstate. It was such a (lovely!) jolt to come from the vast rolling grassland, over a hill and to suddenly see the vast canyons of the Badlands falling away below the road.
We drove on into Medora and stopped in at the national Park visitor centre so I could bu my pin and we got a map of the park. There is a scenic drive that winds through the South Unit with overlooks and trailheads. It is a loop road but a few months ago they had a road slump due to weather damage in one section of the road and it hasn’t been fixed yet ( Trump isn’t big on funding National Parks!) so we spent a couple of hours driving right to the end and back again. The views over the Missouri River and Badlands were great but we were a bit disappointed not to see any bison, although we saw plenty of bison poop!
Along the raod we passed through a coupl eof “Prairie Dog Towns”, these are large swathes of grassland that the local varmints move in and occupy, digging dozens of burrows. The pop their heads up and skitter around nibbling away at the grasses and seeds and squeeking. They’re pretty cute.
It was approaching 4pm when we finally checked in to the hotel, we freshened up but didnt stay long as we had some big entertainment booked for our evening. The Burning Hills Amphitheater was built in 1958 one mile west of Medora for the production of a show to commemorate, you guessed it, Theodore Roosevelt, to help celebrate his 100th birthday. The show had mixed success over the following years but after a local businessman purchased the theatre, made some improvements to it and produced a more general variety show it has taken off and is now a huge draw for the town. The “Medora Musical” is called the “rootinist, tootinist show in the West!” – so of course I had to see it! The organisation that now manages the show run a number of other entertainments, including the Pitchfork Steak Fondue, a “cowboy cookout”, where guests are served 12 oz steaks that have been stuck on the end of a picthfork and deep fried in huge vats! There was no way we was going to miss that!
We arrived in plenty of time at the venue, a big outdoor verandah with seating for at least 600 people and we watched the cook string the steaks on the pitchforks and sat down to admire the view. There were only 200 of us booked for this evenings meal and the process ran like clockwork. When the food was ready we all lined up and handed over our tickets in exchange for our massive steak , which were served with a buffet of salads and potatoes and baked beans on a classic tin plate. It was really, really good!
After dinner we walked along the hill to the entrance to the ampitheatre and rode the escalator down into it.
It’s another marvel, a huge stage with seating for 2,900 people, with a backdrop of the badlands. We had a great view and the show was delightful, purely American , with a cowboy band, boot skootin cowboys and cowgirls dancing around, great tunes, including an excellent gospel choir and riders on horseback waving American flags! And, of course, Theodore Rooselevt made several appearances during the show. For the finale they lit up the hills behind with the stars and stripes while the spot-lit horse riders picked their way down the hills. The singers finished the final chorus and the fireworks lit up the sky. What a show! In the middle of nowhere!
