Theodore Roosevelt National Park - Day 1

We had a great day in the park!  This was supposed to be the hottest day we were here, so we didn't plan all of our hiking for today.  We did a few short hikes this morning and then spent the rest of the day on the scenic drive.  We have a few longer hikes planned for tomorrow.  We started at the Skyline Vista "trail."  I put trail in quotes because it was a .2-mile long sidewalk to an overlook.  It was the easiest hike we did today and we had a great view of the badlands in the park.

The next hike we did was Wind Canyon Trail.  This is a .4-mile loop that looks down at the Little Missouri River.  This was a really pretty spot in the park!

We continued with the Buck Hill hike.  This is a really short walk up a giant, steep hill.  Once you get up the hill though it is 100% worth it.  We lucked out too because there was a herd of wild horses waiting for us at the top.  Seeing the horses with the gorgeous scenery was really cool!

Our last hike was the Old East Entrance hike which is .8-miles round trip.  This takes you to the entrance station to the park from the 1930's.  This hike is fun because you start off walking through a prairie dog town.  Some of the prairie dogs didn't mind us there, others were shouting to their friends that we were pretty threatening.  Either way, they were a lot of fun to watch!  At the end of the trail, you get to the old entrance station which is cool to see that it is still there.  We also were fortunate enough to see a bison not far off the trail.  In fact, he kept walking towards us, so eventually we had to stop taking pictures of him and get the heck out of there!

This one was yelling at us.  :-)

We didn't think he would climb down, but he did (note the kicked up dust from him sliding down).

The Old Entrance into the park

Same bison, he's heading towards the trail.  Thank goodness for zoom lenses!

Pretty formation at the end of the scenic drive

We finished up around 1:00 with all our hikes and driving the scenic drive, so we thought we'd check out Medora - the little adorable town just outside the park.  The downside is, we are here just after peak season, so there's nothing open other than about 3 restaurants and 2 souvenir shops.  The upside is, there's no one here.  We got bored pretty quickly, so we decided to drive the scenic drive in the park again.  Along the way, we saw more horses, prairie dogs, and bison.  All-in-all, a fantastic day in a National Park!

Turkeys

These horses started to run towards the people on the side of the road!  They stopped a few feet away from people.  A park ranger came over pretty quickly to tell people to back away!

We were cracking up at the white horse whose neck is apparently too heavy!  :-)

This foal had enough people watching today.

Lazy prairie dog

I really liked the changing leaves!

This is a zoom lens, but I wasn't zoomed in at all because we drove right next to him.  He's as big as our car!