Friday - May 28, 2021
After our long day yesterday, we decided to take it slow today. I spent a couple hours getting yesterday's blog written, then when Joe got up, we had breakfast and did a little house cleaning. I made a list of the rest of the things we want to see or do here, and we started checking off that list. We headed into town about 11:30, fueled up, and decided to finish our drive of the South Unit of the Park. Since they had closed the road on the Loop, we decided to drive the other end of the Loop to finish. We go about 6 miles before the split, but the drive on the other part of the Loop was a waste of time, it only went about 500 feet before we hit the "road closed" sign. But there was an active prairie dog village here, so we got out and walked it a bit. Joe wants to sit out there and commune with them, but the weather hasn't cooperated. It was chilly this morning (42 when I got up), but bearable. I took a close-up of one of their holes, and we had several of them barking at us. We did see 5 buffalo on this short drive, and 2 feral horses in the distance.
The little mounds are their holes.
We also saw this really cool bird, maybe a black-billed magpie.
The picture below is the black-billed magpie off the internet. Looks like the same bird to me.
We just got back to town and John called, so we pulled over to talk to him. I watched these rock climbers while we talked.
Made a stop at the post office, where we saw these really cool bird houses, made from old cowboy boots and license plates.
Next on our list was to check out the Sully State Park, just outside of town. This is a horse campground, with nice horse pens and campsites.
As we were about to drive out of the park, 2 riders came in, we think they might have been the camp hosts.
Our grand plan for the day was to drive into Dickinson to Walmart and Pizza Ranch. When we left this campground, we actually dumbed onto a dirt road that took us to Dickinson, right up Joe's alley. We got lucky and saw more pheasants, 2 cocks and 2 hens. We were excited to see these.
Further down the road, I spotted something that looked like a rabbit, but larger. Joe finally saw it, and we glassed it through the binoculars, and it was a rabbit. I told him if we had rabbits that large at home, we wouldn't have any bushes. Joe googled it when we got back to the RV, and it was a white-tailed jack rabbit, which grow to 2 foot long and weigh 7 lbs. That was what we saw! It was too far away for a picture, so I got this one off the internet.
We were reminded that we were on open range when we came upon cattle near the road again. None of them crossed, but we had to slow down for them. No fences.
There were a lot of oil wells on this road, and the road was maintained very well. There was also a tank farm for train cars, and a propane refinery. We finally got to Dickinson about 2:45, and went looking for a car wash to get rid of yesterday's mud. We kept seeing the drive-through type, and Joe wanted one he could wash himself, which we finally found. It took a credit card, for 3 minutes and 40 seconds. I think he put his car through 5 times, at least. We used a car wash earlier on this trip that took a credit card, and it just ran until you stopped it. This one, Joe had to keep inserting his card. Not sure what it cost us. We did our shopping at Walmart, had lunch/dinner at Pizza Ranch (5:00 p.m.), and shopped a little at Runnings (I made Joe buy a flannel shirt, since it's still winter here). Then we headed back to Medora that same route we had taken to get here. Besides the pheasants and rabbit, we saw 7 antelope, some geese with babies, and 5 deer, 4 of them were our resident in-town deer. It did get up to 66 degrees, but with the wind, it stayed pretty cool (thus, the flannel shirt). We drove out to the rodeo grounds -- someone in town this morning thought there was a rodeo tonight, but the only thing going on out there was them getting the grounds dragged. But town was hopping! Cars lined both sides of the main street. We saw a poster this morning about a Cowboy Poet Festival, which I thought started tomorrow, but I'm thinking it started tonight. We will check that out first thing in the morning. We attended one of these several years ago in Prescott and it was a lot of fun. All plans for tomorrow are on hold until we figure that out.
We got back to camp about 7:30. Our trip today was 119 miles. And as I write this (10:00 p.m.), it's raining again.
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