Destination: Yellowstone Park

Road Trip 2008 - Day 3

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Driving from Mandan, ND to Medora, ND

After a good night sleep, we went to visit the Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, located near the Missouri and Heart rivers. This park includes a reconstructed complex of an infantry and cavalry post with a cemetery. From this post, Lt. Col. George Potter led his cavalry in the Battle of the little Bighorn in 1876 where the Sioux Indians defeated him. At the cemetery, we could read how the men had died (frozen to death, poisoned, an accident, etc.). The State Park also contains the ruins and reconstructions of an old Indian village. In this village, the Mandan Indians used to live. The Mandan Indians were farmers and traders and built their houses from mud. They normally became very old (in the ninety’s), but small pox, brought by the European traders, killed more than ¾ of the villagers and they had to mingle with other Indian tribes.

Our next stop was the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, with the colorful, scenic badlands. We bought our National Park pass for the whole family, sowe can visit all the National Parks for more than a year. We made a tour through the park, with its own characteristic features, like the highly resistant and colorful “scoria” stones.

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 Lighting or grassfire set the layer of coal in the rocks on fire, and this process baked the clay and sand that turned into the redbrick material called scoria. In addition, we saw prairie dogs and some deer. The group of bison we were promised was not there. We only saw one.

After a great dinner at a restaurant in a little town called Medora, with quite a few old historic buildings, we walked back to the American Inn, where we stayed for the night.

DateS

Monday, August 4, 2008

Distance

128 miles

Moving Time

driving about 2 hours

Weather

70 °F
sunny