Theodore Roosevelt National Park

“I have always said I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota.”

Theodore Roosevelt

I have a crush on Teddy Roosevelt.  This is not unusual.  I often get crushes on historic figures, especially after reading a biography or other piece of historical non-fiction featuring leaders of our past.  And these crushes aren’t gender specific.  I had (have) a terrible crush on Eleanor Roosevelt.  Did you know she essentially invented modern day care?  Apparently, during WWII, female factory workers often resorted to leaving their children alone at night – or outside the factory asleep in cars.  What choice did they have?  Their husbands were at war, many of them lived far from family and their neighbors were working alongside them.  Eleanor worked with Kaiser Shipyards founder, Henry Kaiser, to establish a childcare center that served as a model for others to come.  See…easy to have a crush on our formative leaders!

Back to Teddy.  I am not sure I learned much about him in school.  Maybe some faint impression of TR as a relation of FDR.  Popular images of TR generally involve the Rough Riders or the ill-fated Bull Moose party. The caricature swings between war hero and exuberant politico.  What I am coming to appreciate about him is his love of the natural world.  One could argue he loved it a little too much (he was terribly fond of shooting and stuffing animals) but love it he did.  He was in turns a hunter, rancher, cowboy, taxidermist and ultimately a preservationist.  It was time spent mending a broken heart in North Dakota (his mother and wife died on the same day in 1884) that bound him to the gorgeous landscape of the west – and ultimately to preserving large swaths of it for the American people.  His instinct to conserve these landscapes gives him the honor of being the only president for whom a national park is named.

“It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.”

Theodore Roosevelt

The park itself is stunning.  I had high expectations coming in – TRNP is one of a handful of parks I have on my mental list of “must see” parks.  It is split up into three “units” (I have no idea why they call the areas “units” – sounds very martial – but there you have it).  The North and South Unit are separated by about 60 miles – so seeing the entire park takes some planning.  In the middle of the North and South Unit is Elkhorn Ranch.  Elkhorn is where TR spent most of his time while in the Badlands.  I wish I could adequately describe the landscape.  I can’t.  The Indians had a name for it that roughly translated to “no good land,” but I didn’t find it austere.  The buttes themselves are rocky but softened with grasses and abundant wildlife.  There was a gentleness and quiet to the park that seemed unique to the place.

We planned to spend most of our time in the South Unit, in part because it was the hub for the Dakota Nights Astronomy Festival.  Lucky us, our visit coincided with the Festival.  We arrived on Thursday afternoon August 29.  We had booked a campsite in TRNP at the Cottonwood site – the only one in the South Unit.  We only booked one night because that was the only night available.  Partly due to the Festival and partly due to Labor Day, the park was packed.  Our plan was to book the one night and then sign up for a “walk-up” site for the next two days – half the park is held for walk-ups so that seemed like a good plan.  What we failed to account for was the fact that people “walked up” a few days before we got there and planned to stay all weekend!  So, as it turned out, there was no room at the proverbial inn, and we had to move on Friday morning.  The whole campsite dilemma occupied most of Thursday evening, but we still had time to be amused by the prairie dog town near our site – and by the coyote who prowled around the all you can eat buffet (we never saw him make his buffet selection..).

The next day we decided to try our luck at a boondock site.  We needed to settle our housing early to enjoy the days planned activities.  We read about a boondock site about 3 miles from the park entrance on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land.  I know we need to post some details on what boondocking entails – but basically it amounts to free, legal parking/camping.  Diehard campers know about boondocking – as do hunters and others needing a place to rest in the open west. We drove our massive rig up a rutted, single lane dirt road to the most fabulous boondock imaginable.  Perched on a butte overlooking the Badlands and not a soul in site – and did I say free?!  Having secured our little piece of paradise courtesy of Uncle Sam we took off in the tow car for the North Unit.  We hiked a 4-mile loop that wound around buttes and across beautiful prairies tinged purple with Little Bluestem. Our hike was partly supervised by a bison standing on a nearby butte.  The pinnacle of the hike was a spectacular overlook with views of the Little Missouri winding through the valley.  On the drive back to the south, the clouds started to pile up and drizzle a little bit.  Our original plans involved a brief stop at Moby for dinner and showers then a venture out to the Astronomy Festival.  But the rain and our sense of hiking accomplishment was all we needed to huddle up in Moby for the rest of the day – listing to the rain, watching the clouds roll across the Badlands and indulging in homemade lasagna (shout out to Jane Oliver for the recipe!). We topped the night off with a rare movie splurge (limited battery and internet access makes movies a treat!).

The next day, Saturday, we awoke to a gorgeous sunrise and clear skies.  The morning was spent doing trip and homeschool planning.  Bizarrely for a boondock sight in the middle of nowhere we had excellent reception – a rarity.  We took advantage to do as many internet chores as possible.  We finally mustered around 10:30 to head to the park and astronomy related fun.  We took in a lecture on the solar system and saw a movie on eclipses in a cool little pop up planetarium.  Then Dan and the girls built a rocket with the park Rangers while I tucked into a new TR biography.  We capped off the day with another lecture by a physicist from the University of Minnesota.  He had a neat presentation on how the elements formed in space relate to the sodium bentonite deposits in TRNP.  The talk was a little over the girl’s heads (well, if I am being honest it was a little over my head too) but it was a great way to introduce them to the periodic table – which brings back memories of my high school chemistry teacher – another story for another day (it involves her flinging molecules at students that fell asleep in her class…and even the most dedicated students fell asleep in that class…).  After the lecture we drove to a nearby field set up with telescopes.  The telescopes were mostly operated by excellent amateur astronomers, and professionals were also on hand to answer questions and explain the constellations we were seeing.  It was magic being out there under the night sky with other adventurers interested in the heavens.  A truly special park experience.

Sorry to leave TRNP, grateful to TR for making our experience possible.  Will leave you all with this quote from TR, something for us to think about as we contemplate policy choices related to the environment:

“Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.”

Theodore Roosevelt