Theodore Roosevelt National Forest Trip

Hey,

Gonna start documenting my trips on this blog for posterity.

This was a spur of the moment trip. I had just gotten a job in Williston, ND working on a sputter rig and was off for the next 6 days.

I went to the Northern portion of Theodore Roosevelt NP because it was an hour away from Williston and boasted 10 dollar a night campsites. Once I got into the park, the badland canyons, rock formations, buffalo and sunny weather made me want to hike, so hiking I went.

Rangers/camp hosts were really nice people.

I got a late start on this trip so it was mostly a nighthike to start with. Before the sun set, had a tense moment with a buffalo but it turns out that I scared him more than he scared me so he trotted/stumbled away. In my experience with hiking and all the wildlife that goes with it, most of the time it's the hoofed animals that are the most ill-tempered ones, so it was nice that I didn't end up running away from this particular bison this particular time. I've had to run from cows and horses, I don't wanna think about how much meaner buffalo are than them.

Nighthiked past a prarie dog town that coyotes were hanging around, kept going up and up and stopped about 95% up a climb to a plateau, made a small illegal campfire and went to bed (coyotes woke me up a bunch that night. They're not dangerous, just chatty and loud). Was a short mile day, think I probably did 5.

I thought it was the hiking in the dark that made the trail difficult to follow, but it turns out that the trail was just pretty hard to track down. For one thing, it wasn't too obvious, not too upkept, had few blazes and game trails kept running in, out and across it. Problem is that the actual trail looked like a game trail most of the time, but I only got crossed up once. Just had to do alot of scouting. As I climbed higher and hit the plateau/plain, you could pick out the blaze markers from a ways away so the going got easier. Cruised through another prairie dog town, down to the river, paralleled the road all the way back to my car.

Was a short, 12 mile round trip loop but the views were nice, the canyons and rock formations were really cool and water seemed pretty abundant though it was brown.

The best thing about this park was that I got to finally hike in the prairie, which has been an aspiration of mine for years. Verdict-prairies are kinda like the Serengeti and other grasslands I think. Really sunny, and you can see forever but they have alot more water/wildlife than the desert. Still, you're not exactly tripping over water sources, so it's clearly best to plan out where to refill.

Dunno if there were any big lessons from this trip as it was a quick and easy overnighter, but it was nice to get back on a trail again for a couple days.

Youtube video about the trip is here