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.