Traveling Montana to North Dakota

Saying goodbye to Yellowstone National Park we traveled northeast through Montana planning to stay at a Harvest Host winery in Billings, Montana the next night. We made better time driving than expected due to the forecasted rains being of the lighter and intermittent type so decided to continue on for a few more miles. In searching for a place to stop for the night we found the “Small Towne RV Park” listing on the Montana state website. The reviews for this RV park were a bit amusing and since we prefer to patronize smaller, local businesses we thought we’d give this small town campground a try. Upon arrival to the town of Terry, Montana we discovered that the area of town the campground was in had only dirt roads with lots of potholes and muddy puddles. With growing skepticism about our plan to support small local businesses we continued driving down the roads toward the campground. It was pouring rain when we finally arrived at the campground but our contact person “Mel” cheerfully greeted us and helped us get Wander parked in the proper area. Mel then put a doormat at our door, placed a trash can nearby and presented us with a notebook with information about the area. Mel’s smile, service and pleasant demeanor made the long muddy drive to his little campground seem insignificant and we thought the $25 fee was a bargain for full hookups.

The next morning we continued heading east on I-94. Stopping for fuel we came upon the town of Beach, North Dakota. Since we were not in a hurry and had never been in North Dakota before we decided to drive into the town and look around. As we drove around we saw the town’s history museum and considered stopping in for some info about the town and its past but the museum was not open. We did see a commemorative plaque placed at the site of a speech given by Clara Darrow from the North Dakota Votes for Women League in September of 1914 and decided to celebrate women finally getting to vote by getting some coffee at a coffee shop around the corner. In addition to being a coffee shop they also sold leather treatments for saddles and cowboy hat cleaning solutions. It’s easy to tell when you’re in a real cowboy town when you can pick up your saddle treatments with your espresso!

We arrived at Medora, North Dakota and the Teddy Roosevelt National Park about noon and checked on available camping inside the park. Since the campsites inside the park are on a first come first served basis and it was almost Memorial Day weekend we thought the campground would already be full. Much to our delight we were able to get a nice drive through campsite with plenty of room around us. With our America the Beautiful Pass we only paid $7 a night. There are no RV hookups in the park so we are boondock camping which is becoming our favorite way to camp.

Driving to our campsite we saw buffalo and prairie dogs galore which was quite fun. We were also reminded by several park signs that we would be camping in an area with large numbers of wild animals of different varieties. There were bear boxes to store food in and bear resistive closures on the trash cans. We also saw these in Yellowstone and were once again thankful that our travel trailer was hard sided and that we had bear spray as a deterrent.

The Teddy Roosevelt National Park is another beautiful park with interesting rock formations, buttes, mesas and cliffs. We plan to be here for a few days before traveling on to South Dakota to explore their badlands, see Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monuments.