Teddy-North

 Our first full day at Teddy Roosevelt was chilly and sunny.

We had decided that we would head up to the North Unit for the day to take advantage of the nice weather.  The North Unit is about an hour away, so we packed up lunch and snacks in our cooler and headed over.

Then we hit road construction.  Quite a bit of it.  And our one hour drive more than doubled.

We finally arrived, quickly stopped at the pit toilets by the Visitor Center, then drove to the end of the road for one of the hikes Kieran had picked out.

It was still chilly, but the birds were out and we enjoyed spotting some new ones while hiking.

Our two mile hike was along a butte, and we only saw three other people.

Cacti were just starting to bloom,

and our path ended at a massive view.

Amazing.

We got back to the car & drove to the next stop.

Kieran had picked out a four mile loop hike.

We ate lunch, looked at maps, and checked time.

We had dinner and show reservations that night, and due to that, decided to modify the hike a wee bit to factor in the road construction delay we would face leaving the park.

We headed off on the trail, but when it started to meander along exposed drop offs, I doubled back to pick up our car and move it down to the next parking area.

Probably a good move too.  The rest of the family absolutely loved the trail...

but also said I would have been incredibly uncomfortable with the exposed drop offs.

So by the time I got back to the car & drove down to the parking area, I only had time to visit the pit toilets (the only ones inside the North Unit apart from Visitor Center), then have a snack while watching some other hiker check out a grazing bison...

and then the hikers emerged.

The four of us set off on the rest of the trail, meandering into a dry creek bed in a canyon.  We knew we couldn't complete the entire loop, but would have to turn around and double back at some point.

The weather made it easy-we ran out of shade, the sun popped out, and all of us were running low on water (there isn't any inside the North Unit), so we turned around to head back to the car.

I wound up in the front, and as we approached our final dry creek crossing I looked up and came to a stop.

A bison was walking up the creek bed toward us.

Then another came up behind it.

We stood still for a while watching them watch us, then Kevin walked a bit ahead on the trail-knowing we had to cross a gully to get off the trail.

He motioned us forward, we tried for calm walking, and left the bison to the trail.

Then we checked out some unique geologic formations for our Rock Hound.

Cannonball rocks.

Then we were out of water and clouds.

So we headed back out of the North Unit, through the construction melee, back to our hotel for a quick refresh before our dinner reservation.

We had decided to check out the much hyped Medora Musical and the fondue barbeque for dinner.  

The venue was beautiful-on top of a mesa overlooking the city of Medora, the food delicious, then we walked over to the venue for the show.

And it was quite a show-audience participation, live music, lots of singing, so many costume changes, live horses, and fireworks were all involved.

Best part of the evening?

My company, of course, and putting on a sweatshirt and jacket in June.