Theodore Roosevelt National Park

It was crystal clear and cold when we got up this morning.  21 degrees.  I checked the forecast for the National Park.  High of 60 today.  Looks like we’re finally outrunning the cold.

We set out after breakfast west on I-94.  Eventual target was the national park, but maybe something else would interest us also.  And something else did.  Something to add to our “World’s Largest” list.  I spotted a sign advertising the world’s largest Holstein cow, just down the road in New Salem.

Why not?

"Salem Sue" was visible from the interstate sitting near the top of the only mound for miles around.  We took the short gravel drive to the parking area immediately below the cow.  It was udderly enormous.

Several miles down I-94 we were treated to another item to add to our “World’s Largest” collection.  The world’s largest scrap metal sculpture.  The first piece of this sits right along the interstate and is called Geese In Flight.  We stopped here to take a picture.  There are other sculptures spaced out along 32 miles of an officially unnamed two-lane road, but unofficially named the Enchanted Highway, ending in the town of Regent, which the sculptor is trying to revive.  From the looks of a couple other towns along this route, reviving the town may be a tall order.

We drove down the Enchanted Highway for nearly 15 miles and saw the deer sculpture and the grasshopper sculpture.  Each was correspondingly large, requiring one to step away quite a bit to fit it in the picture.  The parking lot of the deer sculpture also had a maze made out of rusty metal panels, each panel having a different pattern.

We arrived at the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park just before noon.  Since the  campground was first-come, first-served, we stopped there first to secure a camp site and to make lunch.  Temperatures by this time were in the low 60’s so we ate outside.  Two days ago we were running from the snow.

We took a hike on the Painted Canyon Trail, which is just over two miles one-way to the junction of other trails at the bottom of the canyon.  But there was one problem as we started out.  The trail was occupied by a herd of bison.  They had also overrun the parking lot of the trailhead, snarling up what little traffic was there.  We had to find an alternate route through the grassland at the top of the canyon to where the trail descended into the canyon.

If you look carefully at the bison behind the car, its tail is raised and it is leaving a souvenir for the car’s occupants.

Painted Canyon is probably best hiked in the early morning or late afternoon because of the shadow detail, but early afternoon also worked well for us.  We soon shed all our long sleeve clothing due to the warmth.  I can’t imagine coming out here in August.

The Cottonwood Campground, where we are at, borders the Little Missouri River.  We walked to the river after coming back from hiking.  In the distance were about a half dozen wild horses and we saw and heard them splashing noisily across the river.  So cool.