Little Missouri River
The mobile mechanic arrived about 10:30 this morning. We hope he fixed our brakes. When he removed the wheel, he could find nothing wrong at first, but then noticed that the brake adjustment lever was out of place. He knocked it back to where it should be, and readjusted the brakes. I hope that it has fixed the problem, and we’ll know first thing tomorrow morning when we leave.
After lunch we drove around the scenic loop drive through Theodore Roosevelt National Park South Unit. Along the way we stopped at several spots to take photographs, and do some short hikes.
Our first stop was at a large herd of bison. There were a number of cows and some calves, together with a few bulls. There were also many prairie dogs there. I took a lot of video. Then we drove on to the Ridgeline trail. This is a fairly steep climb up to a high viewpoint. The trail is quite short, only about a kilometer. It overlooks the entire park in a 360 degree panorama.
Next we stopped at the Coal Vein trail. This is where there was an underground fire in the lignite coal. It burned from the early 1950’s until 1977. Red clinker called “scoria” is left behind. We then drove to another very high viewpoint, Buck Hill. There is another impressive overlook over the park after a short hike to the top of the hill. There were two large bison bulls at the top of the hill.
One of the nicest views of the day was near the end, at a short hike along the Wind Canyon trail. This leads to an overlook of the Little Missouri River. There were many bison on the hills to the north. I thought about how similar it must have looked to this, one hundred and fifty years ago before the land was opened up and the bison almost exterminated.