June 8-9-10 - 2018 Medora, North Dakota

Friday, the 8th, we moved from Cody, Wyoming to Medora, North Dakota (390 miles / 625 km).
President Eisenhower has made our entire trip, if not possible, then at least a lot easier, by creating the Interstate Highway System.
President Theodore Roosevelt made it possible to see things that were worth driving thousands of miles to see (and especially on this half of our trip).

Theodore Roosevelt is well known for having the Teddy bear (teddybjørnen) named after him, and for being one of the four Presidents on Mount Rushmore. But there is a lot more to the man. One of his biggest achievements was conservation of land and wildlife (naturbevaring).


Theodore Roosevelt

He was a politician from New York. When he was 24 years old, his mother and his wife died on the same day in the same house (unrelated incidents). To deal with his sorrow, he isolated himself in a small cabin (hytte) near Medora, North Dakota. While here, he fell in love with the pure and wild nature of the west.
He ran for president in 1884 but lost. He then moved to North Dakota and established two ranches.

While here he also observed the wilderness being destroyed by greed (grådighed) and reckless (uforsvarlig) use of resources.  That is when he started working for conservation (bevaring) of the wild nature. Roosevelt was elected Vice President in 1900. When President McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th president of the US.

During his presidency he used all possible means (midler) to establish protected areas. He established 150 National Forests, 23 National Parks and Monuments, 51 Bird Reserves etc. etc. All in all, he set aside for conservation (bevaring) 230 million acres. That is an area 4 times as big as Minnesota and 20 times as big as Denmark.

One of the National Parks is named after him.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park near Medora, North Dakota. There we saw his first log cabin and the country he fell in love with.
It is an area of prairie (græsland) mixed with badlands (ufrugtbare klipper). A mixture of fertile and barren land.

 

Wind Canyon

We saw some wildlife. There were bison (no picture this time), and wild horses.

And there were LOTS of prairie dogs. They were fun to watch – running, playing, eating, hiding…. We have heard them described as “barking squirrels”. That is a very good description.

There is also a petrified forest (forstenet skov) in the park. It was strange to see stuff that looked like wood, but that was hard like stone and over 50 million years old.

 

 

There is petrified wood in this picture, but the interesting thing, is the brown rock balanced on the clay soil, that is being washed away.

We walked through a large area of prairie on the way to the forest. It was windy, so we could see the “waves” in the grass.
This must have been a lot like the prairie, that the pioneers walked through on their way west.

The town of Medora is an interesting place. There are 111 inhabitants (beboere). But the town seems much bigger, because there are lots of stores, restaurants, hotels, a courthouse, and not least – cultural activities.

They have a big musical variety show, that they put on every night during the summer. They also have concerts during the day; a gospel-brunch 4 days of the week; and a “dialog” production about Theodor Roosevelt (we went one afternoon and learned a lot more about the man).

They also have several museums and are planning to build Theodor Roosevelt's presidential library soon.

We had a couple of good days in Medora. Maybe not the most exciting stop on our trip, but they cannot all be top 10 candidates and you don’t know until you have done it.

Written by Mary & JJ