One More Word on Theodore

After visiting Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and reading David McCullough's book Mornings On Horseback about TR's formative years, I have been trying to reconcile several ideas in my head. Roosevelt is celebrated for his advancement of "the strenuous life". He calls the outdoor life a "tonic" and points to his outdoor activities as a major part of shaping his life experience. Historically he is credited with bringing forward the ideas of conservation and outdoor adventure as part of the thinking that pushed the idea into the mainstream of American thought and psyche.

Except his experiences lead from his position as a wealthy elite. In fact the elite of the elite. His family's wealth was of long standing and entrenched from his grandfather's time. His house were of the upstairs/downstairs Downton Abbey style. Not in physical size but with servants in the lower house cooking and upstairs servants to serve meals and attend to family needs.  In his childhood his father and mother took the entire family to Europe for a year of travel, and they went again through Europe onto Egypt  a chartered rip on a boat down the Nile (complete with servants). Nobody had to go into work and punch a clock. True the Roosevelt family did attend to business, but the ability to walk away for long periods of time was a testament to the wise investment choices made by the family and the size of their fortune. His explorations come with the extra "padding" of wealth to hire support in the form of guides and cooks and manservants.

Roosevelt comes to the Dakotas ostensibly on business to explore about raising cattle in the North Dakota badlands. He is also a crux point in his life. He has just lost his beloved wife who died just after giving birth to his first child. On the same day his mother died. Two beloved figures in his life. He turns his daughter over to his sister to be raised. I cannot fathom his grief. He plunges on with some politics in the spring but after the Republican convention he is off to the Dakotas.

In the Dakotas he does have help from folks who were guides for him in Maine. It is also said that he threw himself into learning the trade of ranching, never being a very skilled cowboy but adequate and willing to the tasks.

McCullough never says it but I can imagine him riding out to the edge of a grassy butte and just letting the tears flow. Roosevelt in some of his writings talks about this being a change point in his life. Now being unfettered with family he faces decisions about his life. His experiences in the Badlands are a way for him to step away from New York re-gather himself through the tonic of the vigorous life and plunge ahead.

And yet it was his wealth that allowed him to do it. His cattle venture cost him about some $700000 in today's money. As a young man he was able to step away, sort out his life as best he could, weather a financial loss and see his change circumstance as a product of a vigorous life on the range. He was not the workaday cowboy supporting the daily tasks and the venture after Roosevelt returned to his city and wealth based life. Maybe in some way you needed to be financially independent to allow the tonic of the wilderness to work on you. Otherwise you  are just a work-a-day-joe whose roping and riding are a paycheck rather than a adventure to write about or to be able to tell stories about in the drawning rooms of high society.

It is not without notice that I also am at a change point in my life. I don't have Roosevelt's means but there is a certain parallel that for the short time we have the means to travel and the luxury of time and the wilderness to short out what comes next. So for it has been for us, like Roosevelt, a delightfully bully tonic!

Adventures in the Ted: Day 3 - Morning Ride

This was our last few hours in TRNP. We did not double down on the previous evening's trip and star gazing. A few too many clouds and we were tired. We had about 4-5 hours of driving ahead of us so we opted for a bike ride on the east side of the perimeter road (the flat side) heading out for a few miles before breakfast. One last hurrah for TRNP!

It was a beautiful morning. Cool in the early morning sun, little wind. No traffic, pavement smooth like "budder". Just a few miles of pedalling before having a bowl of granola, packing up and moving onto Montana. Bunch of prairie dogs over here, couple of horses over there. Head down, hunched over. The legs make little circles, and wheels make big ones. The road rising gently. We can see the steep hills in the distance.

A guy in a car coming towards us flags us down to tell us there are bison ahead. Couple dozen head. One in the road. We thank him and move on.

We rounded the corner, and boom they are all there. I thought like maybe off to the side, but no, the entire herd on both sides of the road! Big males, and mothers with calves. It is just me and Sweetness and Marsha on the Hopeville Flyer, with a roadway strewn with animals and bison dung. And there are like 50 of them!

Now with our previous magical experience of parting herds with the car, we figured we could move slowly but deliberately and make it to the other side. The one thing the car insulates you from is the huffing and grunting of the animals. This was up close and personal. There was no mistake that we were not wanted, no matter how gentle our pace, how peaceful our manner. And it was a bunch of them that took up the menacing the chorus, especially the Mom's.  Stoically we peddled on and got through.

About 10 minutes later the road rose sharply and granola started sounding awfully good. A good trip back down to the campground, all flat or downhill would be the reward. The bison were sure to have moved off, right?

Wrong! Far from moving they had settled in for the morning, right where they had been. Another white knuckle, heart in the throat ride, slowly observing and listening for bad intent, riding with gears ready to sprint like a time trial champion. Once more through the gauntlet, successfully.

We ran into the guy who flagged us down coming back up the road on a bike. Turns out his is a middle school tech coordinator in the Chicago area. We had a nice conversation, pedaled on, then broke camp, and headed off to Montana. 

Adventures in the Ted: Day 2 - Jonas Creek Hike

The Jonas Creek Trail bisects the the perimeter road. We hiked it upstream for about 2.5 miles. It was fun to be hiking in the west again. Big open space, so trails are placed along valleys leading up to the head of the stream. In TRNP it is the North Dakota Badlands with open prairie and range lands with cottonwoods trees in the draws. David McCollough, whose Mornings On Horseback, I have been reading draws a distinction between the North Dakota Badlands and the South Dakota Badlands. Here it is greener, more range land, suitable for grazing animals than the more forbidding south. I would have to agree. One of my reservations about the stop was that I had seen the southern version, and I could not have imagined what we would do.

The north was wonderful. We hit a cool spell with some clouds and a nice wind each day. The sun was hot, but not too. We were just past peak flowers but there were enough to decorate the trail pleasantly. The trail rose, but steadily, and just enough to let the legs know that it was a hike. My right knees has been sore after riding the last few weeks and it tolerated the hike OK.

A very nice hike indeed!

Adventures in the Ted: Day 1 - Huge Animals

The first day in TRNP we drove the perimeter road. We stopped at the scenic walks to overlooks and a couple of the nature trails. It was a good overview of the park but the only wildlife we saw were a couple of distant horses, and a way distant herd of bison. One of the stops was a place that was said to be recommended by rangers for viewing sunsets, the highest point in the park. We determined that it would be a great plan after dinner to drive the perimeter road to the view point bringing our chairs. It also would be likely that there would better wildlife viewing in the evening.

On the way out we saw two antelope and a group of wild horses. And then as we rounded the corner,  we encountered a young male bison. The guideline is to keep the wildlife at least 200 yards away but he no more than 25 yards and in the middle of the road. It is the beginning of the rut for the young males and this guy was looking for a girlfriend. It was a bit of a standoff until he wandered off. 

Around the corner was the rest of the herd. Maybe 25 head scattered on both sides of the road.  A line of cars in stretched in both directions, a crawl of traffic taking pictures and moving slowly through the clusters of huge animals. 

It is hard to explain the bulk of these creatures. It is not length or height but the thickness of the chest and back and shoulders. A careless move by one of them would dent your car. I could not imagine the damage from an angry bison, coming at you with purpose. It was a gingerly enacted waltz, scanning the animals for intent as we moved through along with the traffic.

The traffic thinned as we rounded a few more turns and encountered another young male. This one was squarely in the middle of the road. There was no way around. He did not move, just stared us down. He did not care for us being there. 

After what seemed a very long while he did move slightly to his side of the road. He flopped down into a patch of sandy dirt and began a dust bath, rolling on his back, kicking his legs, flipping his tail, getting and all over himself. It was quite a show.

I inched forward. He snapped to his feet, and stared the car down again. Then after a bit, as before, he flopped down again, and proceeded with the dust bath. I moved the car quickly past, not looking back to see if he enjoyed chasing cars more than dust baths. 

We got up to the view point and took out our chairs. It is a spectacular sunset. The remnant clouds of afternoon thunder showers rimmed the western sky. Light streaked through breaks in the clouds. To the southwest but far away an active rainstorm provided a show of light through rain. The view point gave a 360 panorama. It was going to be a pretty clear night once the clounds diminished. We decided to stay until nightfall.

That plan ran into a little trouble. The gentle breeze, of the evening turned into a pretty good wind.  As we sat in our chairs reading and observing the night, we kept going back to the car and layering up. We arranged the chairs so the car was a windbreak, but it was steady. With the sun going in and out of the shrinking clouds, and  setting,  it got colder and colder. Not to mention, in the western edge of a time zone the light lingers late. The sky in the east went through various shades of blue to indigo, to dark blue and competed with colder and colder temps.

It was a glorious show as we sat and hunkered down. The only light was that of about a half dozen distant gas flares as just outside the park the Dakota oil boom goes on. We read on our Kindle and iPad, waiting for the stars to come out at the edge of the road at a scenic viewpoint  at the highest spot in TRNP. Dusk was long in coming for all the show the stars did not peak out of the dark blue blanket.

Then we heard it. The clatter of bison hooves on the pavement behind me, close behind. Marsha and I froze. She could see the big dark shape moving off the prairie and onto the road. I dare not move. We were out of the car without our  steel protective barrier. 

It was a single young male out courting, the brother or cousin of the ones we saw before. Which was safer, bolt for the safety of the car or stay frozen and try not to cause alarm?The clatter of hooves stopped, and my heart rose higher in my throat. We choose the freeze method not because we figured it was the best course, but because neither of us could bring ourselves to move.  

We waited for what felt a long time, then the hoof beats started again. Thankfully he slowly ambled by, crossed the road and shuffled down a draw looking for ladies in all the right places. Immediately, the terror changed to - THAT WAS SO COOL! A bison walked right by us! How cool was that? It was just the charge of adrenaline to ward off the cold and keep us hanging on for stars and maybe a chance at the northern lights. 

We re-hunkered. Put on hats and more layers.  In a short while in the general direction of where the bison ambled there was the yip of a coyote. Then another called out, and another, and then it was a chorus of yipping and crying out to the east. And then, over the ridge, in the draw just below us, much closer, was an answer from another pack. That pack was real close, but we did not waver in our hunker.   We had just out maneuvered, out stared and out waited the best of the bison, a couple of packs of wild dogs were nothing to us! We outsat the yipping and yodelling and things quieted down.

We hung on waiting for stars to show until 9:55, and then folded. I mean literally, we folded our chairs and drove back to the campsite. And true to form, as we drove in and looked up at the limited circle offered in the clearing, the sky was black and full of stars.

Goodbye Ted Roosevelt! Hello, Ted Turner!

We made it to Glacier national Park in Montana. We are staying at Brownies Hostel and Bakery in East Glacier tonight, in the western part of park (hopefully) and back to Brownies to explore the east side more.

The dilemma here is so much to say with band width that is limited and comes and goes as guests jump on and off the Internet. Pretty sure folks across the hall were streaming a movie. So, since things are good now for a little let me rush to say that we LOVED Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We saw bison, antelope,mule deer, prairie dogs, wild horses and great sunsets. Much more to come on this.

It was a long drive across Montana. we broke it up with a stop in Ackley Lake where we saw a bald eagle flying along the lakeshore.

We arrived at GLacier about 2 PM. Went over to Two Medicine Lake.

Bully for North Dakota & Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Long day of driving through Minnesota and across North Dakota. We are now just over 2000 miles in our trip log. We are staying in Medora, ND, a small town just outside Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Tonight we stay at a funky combination western bookstore (a very good western bookstore at first glance) and motel called the Amble Inn. Tomorrow we go into the park for two days of camping/hiking/biking. On the way in we stopped at Painted Rocks which is part of the park. It offers a scenic overview of the formations of the Badlands.

This morning we for the third time got hit with rain showers just as we were packing up. Enough time for a nice breakfast and to start organizing and then a rain shower. Just enough to cause us to scurry more than we wanted to get the things that were pulled out of the car for morning packing back in and just enough to get the tent fly wet. It also brought out the Minnesota Mosquito convention. We will not miss the mosquitos, even though between the screen shelter, DEET, and citronella candles we put up a good fight.