Enchanted Highway

 May 31, 2021 - Monday (Memorial Day)

Today was supposed to be a easy day, getting ready to move on tomorrow.  Our only plans were to get our chores done so we could get an early start tomorrow (laundry, vacuuming, dumping tanks, cleaning windshields, etc.)  But when I got up, I started looking at the map again, and I came up with the bright idea that we should drive over past Dickinson to this "Enchanted Highway" we had read about.  It was in the blurb about the old Highway 10 that made it sound like, at least to me, that the Enchanted Highway was part of the Scenic Byway.  

 It's about 40 miles to Dickinson, and the Enchanted Highway started about 10 miles or so past that, and runs for 35 miles.  So it would take a chunk out of our day, but it was doable.  I suggested that to Joe and he got right out of bed (he's always ready for a drive).   This would completely change the tempo of our day -- from leisure to busy.  But by 9:00 we were fueled and on the way.  Joe told me to just take the North Dakota map with us, that way maybe we would stay in this state.  We stopped at the I-95/Hwy 85 restaurant, Trappers, for breakfast.  Their walls were full of mounted animal heads of all the local animals, and traps in all sizes.  Moving on, somewhere on this stretch, out in a field, we saw an antelope with a new baby.  It was so wobbly on its legs that we think today might have been its birthday.  On the eastern edge of Dickinson, we exited I-94 onto what became Hwy 10.  That was about 10:15.  

Just 10 minutes later, we came upon the first metal sculpture, entitled "Geese in Flight.  (You can see this one from I-94.)  These structures are absolutely awesome, much grander and more detailed than we expected, and larger.  

We got off of Hwy 10 and took our pictures.  The write-up said there were pull-offs at each one, so we were good on that. 

X212                                        Geese In Flight    Listed in Guiness Book of World Records as the                                                             world's largest metal structure.

The driveway leading into this sculpture was lined with geese on posts.  The posts were different lengths.

We went back to Hwy 10, our scenic byway, and continued on our way.  This is where I made my mistake, though I didn't realize it at the time.  A few miles later, we came upon another "enchanted" structure, but we didn't know if it was part of the Enchanted Highway structures, it didn't say it was.  But it was pretty neat.  An old farmer was out in the field here planting with an old tractor.  The sign over the entrance said "Heritage Farms," and there was a small log cabin there, in addition to this merry go round, and this other sign.

Moving on, we continuously scanned both sides of the highway, looking for these metal structures.  We also watched for signs that we were still on the Old Red Hwy 10, and the Scenic Byway.  Which we were.  But we were not finding the sculptures.  I kept looking at the map, and could see the names of towns mentioned, but nothing about the structures.

One item of interest was this earthmover.  Joe said he operated ones like this, among other things, in View Nam.

The other item of interest on these extra miles was this windmill with a horse on top.  You have to use your imagination a little for the horse, but we thought Brenda would like it.

 Finally, about noon, I got the map out again, and looked until I located the town where the highway supposedly ended.  And discovered we were on the wrong highway.  And had been for 51 miles!  When we were at the first structure (Geese in Flight), we were supposed to stay on that side road/highway, and not return to the Scenic Hwy 10.  That had not been clear to me!  So we took the next road to get back to I-94, and headed back west.  I was so aggravated at myself for not figuring that out ahead of time.  

Anyhow, we got back to the Geese in Flight.  Just past it was a sign listing the rest of them, and how far it was to them.  Something like this is what I kept looking for on Hwy 10.  But success at last.  We went on to the next sculpture, and the rest of them were on this road.  They were all amazing.  There was a phone number to call for a Talking Trail narrative, which gave history and dimensions of some of the sculptures.  I'm listing that phone number here in case I want to refer to it later.  (701-263-4390, then you just tap in the extension and # sign.)

X213                                        Deer Crossing     The buck is 75 ft. tall and 60 ft. long.

                                            Grasshoppers in the Field

X214  See the little grasshoppers here.  The largest grasshopper stands 60 ft. long, 40 ft. tall.

And the grains of wheat are part of this exhibit, and also line the fence.

Amazing imagination and detail.  This next one, Fisherman's Dreams, was my favorite.  Largest fish is a 70 ft. trout, and it has a fly in its mouth.  This is an underwater scene.

x215        See Joe standing there in the blue shirt (for perspective).  These structures really are HUGE.

x216                                    Pheasants on the Prairie    Rooster is 70 ft. long, 40 ft. tall 

On the way to this one, we were listening to the Talking Trail, and it said we weren't too far from the Pheasant Capital of the World, in Mott, North Dakota, and we might even see one in this area.  About that time, Joe spotted a beautiful, male pheasant in the field right next to the road on his side.  Perfect picture.  I handed Joe the camera, and his finger hit a wrong button and screwed up the camera.  He's cursing, the pheasant is running, and I'm giving up on this photo op!  

X217                                Teddy Rides Again

X218                                I think Joe decided to donate me to this one -- The Tin Family, this was the first of these structures.  World's largest Tin Family Man - 45 ft. tall, Woman - 43 ft. tall, Boy - 23 ft. tall

That was the end of those, but in the town of Regent was the Enchanted Castle with the requisite dragon and knight.  We didn't walk around this one.

I don't know what's with the construction equipment, but today is a holiday, so it obviously wasn't working.

Across the road from this, which was at the end of the town of Regent, was a nice row of lilacs.

That concluded this little adventure, so we headed west toward camp.  We stopped again at Trapper's for an early dinner (3:15).  As we got back to where the National Park parallels the Interstate, we saw a whole herd of buffalo, and several feral horses.  They were obviously on display for the holiday.  Joe said anyone driving through the park probably wasn't seeing any of them today, since they were all out by the highway.

We got back to 4:30, having driven 280 miles today on this little jaunt (100 extra, which cost us about 1 1/2 hours).  We got busy with our chores, I went over to the laundromat while Joe started getting the RV ready to travel.  He came over to help carry the baskets to the jeep and we finally walked down to the river here in the campground (we were going to do this all week.)  This has a nice sandy/pebbly beach.

We just got our chores done, and it started raining.  Then stopped.  Then started again.  This went on for a couple hours, with a little thunder and lightning.  I'm getting used to the sound of raindrops hitting the fiberglass roof of the RV.  We did see half a dozen deer and probably that many antelope today, in addition to the mamma and baby. And that awesome pheasant that we didn't get a picture of.  It's rare that we go for a drive and don't see any antelope.  A good day, even though I screwed it up.  But I was glad to get to see these sculptures we had read about.  They were all pretty special.

Cowboy Poetry Gathering

 May 30, 2021 - Sunday

First thing we did this morning was head back to the Cowboy Poetry Gathering to get our tickets for tonight's show.  We caught the last hour of this morning's gospel music session, which was pretty good.  The stage had a nice skull arrangement.  One of the performers brought up a little vase of lilacs, so one of the coordinators added it to the skull arrangement.  Much better!

Some of the performers were quite good, and some of the songs they performed were songs from my childhood, which I probably hadn't heard since, so I enjoyed that.  

For the finale, they sang The Old Rugged Cross and Amazing Grace, and invited the audience to join in.

Then it was time for a short drive.  We tried to find a new road, so we headed west out of town, found a dirt road, which eventually connected to the muddy dirt road we were on the other day to the Elkhorn Ranch.  This one took us to the trail to the Petrified Forest, but it was a 3-mile hike, so we just took a picture.  We did talk to 3 guys who were heading out on the trail.

There is a sign at the entrance to our campground for a Gravel Battle.  

We didn't know what that was about.  But on this drive, we found out.  We kept meeting bicycle riders, probably 20-30, riding individually or twosomes.  We finally got to a sign that said "aid station," which happened to be at the campground we were trying to find.  We spoke to some riders there, and they were doing the Gravel Battle bike race, which was 40, 80, or 120 miles.  Joe had noticed red signs along the road that said "race," which apparently kept them on the right roads.  We continued to see riders all the way back to camp.

Joe also spotted a new kind of oil well.  There was something there called a Well Pilot Variable Speed Drive."  Joe drove all the way around it, checking it out (I'm sure we were not supposed to be back here.)

Continuing on our dirt road, we came upon the Black Water Canyon (not an official sign, but someone had painted that name on a post.)  And we saw our first wildlife of the day, 2 antelope.  We were about 30 miles in.  Shortly after that, we spotted 2 muley deer.  Then we started seeing the occasional antelope, we spooked a mamma with 2 babies when we backed up to get a better look, and another small herd of 6 antelope laying down.  Then we saw a big bird nest in a cottonwood tree with 3 chicks sticking their heads up.  He googled it when we got back, and he's pretty sure they were eagle chicks.  

The landscape here is amazing, badlands on one side of the road, grasslands on the other.

And the occasional strange rock formation.

We ended up by Camel's Hump Lake, which we had passed the other day.  We drove down to it (I picked out a rock I wanted, but Joe didn't load it.)  Pretty lake though.

I guess this is the camel hump.

From there, we dumbed our way back to camp, avoiding getting on I-94 except for about 1 mile.  It was about a 3-hour drive, 70 miles, it's now about 3:00.  We finally found the West River Road, which we had started out looking for.  We had a little time before the Cowboy concert, which started at 7:30.  Joe took a nap, and I watched the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game.

Tonight's show was good.  There were probably about 200 people in attendance, and only 4 performers besides the Emcee.  But they were all good.  It was the 35th Annual Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering here, and they are one of three of the oldest cowboy poetry shows.  Medora is a really small town, so it is interesting that this is held here. 

Someone must have sent me a new vehicle.  This Ford was right outside the Community Center, with my initials on the front.

Our time here is just about over.  We purposely booked in here through the holiday so we didn't have to worry about reservations.  So tomorrow we have to do our "de-camping" chores so we can leave Tuesday.

Cowboy Hall of Fame

 May 29, 2021 - Saturday

I had the Cowboy Poetry Gathering on my mind this morning, so as soon as we had breakfast, we headed to town to get information on that.  I tried to call but never could get a person.  Well, it just starts this afternoon, so we didn't miss it last night.  That was good--we will come back this afternoon. From there, we went to the North Dakota Cowboy Museum, another item on our check list.  It was more interesting than I expected, had a lot of cool exhibits in addition to North Dakota hall of fame cowboys, and significant ranchers.  And a 15-minute video, which was interesting.

Campfire

Chuckwagon

A cute "inside" horse.  I thought John and Bridgette could build this for Catalina until she gets a ranch of her own.

They had a room of bronze statues, which I really like.  These were amazing.  

Although I could easily have taken a picture of every single one, I tried to restrain myself. Here are some of my favorites.

This was my favorite.  It's a prospector trying to get his pack horses up the last hill.  It had a vein of gold at the top.

Joe found this canoe exhibit in their conference room that he liked. (He has developed a real fondness for prairie dogs since we've been on this trip.)  He also liked this lamp.

A group of 6 North Dakota cowboys were famous back in the day, and there is a nice bronze of them.  

These cowboys look pretty good from the rear, too.

This is the photo the bronze is based on. Pretty good likeness.

This was another really cool bronze, with cattle swimming across the river.  I wish I had written the names of all these down.  I think this was "Drifting."

We left here and stopped at a gift shop I had been eyeing all week.  It had a bunch of whirl-a-gigs out front, which are real eye catchers.  

I bought Joe a gift here, which he really liked.  A guard (prairie) dog for him.  (I mentioned he is very fond of the prairie dogs.)  He found the perfect spot for him.  Now he has someone to talk to.  We named it "Theo" for Theodore.

While I was in the gift shop, Joe saw a horse-drawn carriage go by, pulled by draft horses (my favorite).  So we chased all over town (all three streets) to find it again.

We grabbed some lunch and headed over to the Poetry thing.  The talent wasn't as good here as the one we saw in Prescott.  The afternoon session was divided into two parts, and I think there were 12 performers in each part, about evenly mixed between singers and poets.  When the break came, the seats were getting hard, so we decided to skip the second part and come back for the last performance tomorrow night.  The night performances are the more professional artists.  They had trouble with the sign, so the Emcee announced it as the "Kota Cowboy Try Gathering."  He thought that was fitting.  They did get it fixed at the break.

Performers on stage.

In addition to Theo, Joe added another item to the dash today -- a thermometer.  But he hasn't found the perfect place for the transmitter, so he has to work on that some more.  But it does fit on the dash.

We decided to drive through the Park again, an evening drive this time.  Dinner in town took longer than expected so we got a bit of a late start, and finished in the dark.  But we got to see the sun on the Badlands finally, and the usual suspects of wildlife (antelope, buffalo, horses, a deer, prairie dogs, turkeys).  

The buffalo and horses were grazing closer to the road tonight (going and coming, which meant in the dark on the return).  Here are some beautiful horses for granddaughter Catalina, who LOVES horses.

The background in this picture is breath-taking.

I wasn't going to count animals or take pictures tonight, but I just couldn't resist the photos since the animals were so cooperative.  We pulled off and watched these buffalo, with their babies, for several minutes.

And here was our first buffalo jam in this park.  (I love the sun in these pictures tonight.)

We only saw one deer, but it was in such a perfect setting, and it just stood and looked at us, so Joe had to take a picture.

The sun was getting low, but the reflection on the clouds was awesome.  It was a really nice day today (high 70s), although we did have a few sprinkles on this drive.  

When we got to the road closure turn-around, the sun had dropped below the hills.  Joe took a shot of the skyline, and we needed another one of the Jeep, of course.

We had to really watch the road on the way back.  We saw both horses and buffalo grazing right along the side.  It gets dark here about 9:00, and we got back to camp about 9:45. We drove 68 miles today, most of them in the park.  We had really great internet when we got here on Wednesday, but when the campground and town filled up with people, the internet really slowed down.  The campground doesn't have its own internet, it just uses the town one.  So I've had to use our hotspot the last two nights to get my pictures posted.  We are expecting warmer weather tomorrow, and we have the Poetry Gathering tomorrow night.  Otherwise, tomorrow is open so we will see what develops.