Joe & Wilma's Excellent Adventures

Sunday, June 9, 2024

Last trips through the park

We headed into the park about 12:30 p.m., after shopping in town for a girlfriend for Theo, having a bite to eat and getting our sodas.  Theo now has Prairie Rose, nicknamed Rosie.  This is the same shop where I bought Theo for Joe three years ago.

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And we succumbed to the taffy temptation.

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We are looking for everything today, but our main focus is going to be the wild horses. We have only seen one and we’re really wanting to see more, even the herd if possible. They’re supposed to be 200 horses in this park.  We’d also like to see an elk. They’re supposed to be 800 of them so maybe our chances are better there but they’re generally pretty elusive. 

There are several trails and lookout points to hike to.  Some energetic people made it to this lookout.

Our first sighting was, again, the buffalo.  We ran into the big herd of buffalo again, right alongside the road, in the road, both sides of the road -- lots of babies, some of them pretty fresh looking. 

Driving on, I saw a pronghorn off by himself down in a valley. We had to back up, on a curve (Joe complained) for Joe to see him because I wasn’t sure what it was, but we got a good sight.  Just past the pronghorn, Joe found the 10-mile road he had been looking for -- we went past this last night but didn’t drive back so we are going back there now and hope to something.  

It turned out that wasn’t the right road. Well, it was, but Joe read the sign wrong.  It was only a mile and led to a 10-mile trail, but we did see one giant buffalo back there. Its head was huge. He rolled over and finally stood up just as we left so all was not in vain. 

Then back on the main road, we finally saw two horses right beside the road.  This was almost at the end of the road, so we were probably within 2 miles of turning around and heading back. It took just under two hours to go this 26 miles.

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Coming back, we saw the same two horses, pronghorn antelope, and the buffalo jam. Joe had been wanting to stop at one of the Prairie Dog Towns and just sit out there with Theo and Rosie and see if the prairie dogs would come out. This has been on his bucket list ever since we were here three years ago, so today he did it.  One dog barked at him the whole time he walked across, but eventually one of them did come back out of a hole in front of him and just watch him.  Several of the prairie dogs kept an eye on him and one kept chirping, but they never ventured any closer.  The ones further away did come back out of their holes, but the ones close to him did not. The flies were bad here, probably brought on by the prairie dogs. and they were the bitey kind so we didn’t last very long.  Joe set up Theo and Rosie by one of their holes, hoping they would come out to meet their cousins.

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We spent a little over three hours on this drive and considered it productive since we saw the pronghorn and the two horses. In addition to the buffalo,  Joe got to play with the prairie dogs for a bit.  And we saw a deer just before we left the park.  We consider this a productive drive.  It's a beautiful day today, sunny, high of 75, we even got the shorts out.

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For our second foray into the park, we left the RV at about 7:15 pm. But after a stop in town for an ice cream cone, it was actually 7:50 before we entered the park. The sun was still high in the sky so we should be good. We saw the usual bison again.  But then we sighted eight turkeys.  We hadn’t seen any turkeys on this trip yet so that was a welcome sight. Then we saw a deer right by the road.

A few miles later we spotted a coyote.  Somehow, that is more exciting here than seeing them at home.

 

We got to the turnaround at exactly 9 o’clock. The same two horses were still here --this time they were on the road so we got a better picture. It’s the time of night now where all the bushes look like animals, so it’s getting hard to see.  

We didn’t meet another car on the way back until we got near town, so we must’ve been the last car to go all the way to the end.  As we got closer back to the town, we did see a few cars coming into the park, probably doing a night drive after attending the Musical.The only things we saw coming back were buffalo, which were really hard to see. One was right on the edge of the road and Joe was lucky to see him. He swerved around him, scared me to death. We got back to camp about a 9:45 but we did get to see a pretty sunset.

Tomorrow is a travel day.  And it's supposed to rain.  We are leaving North Dakota and heading for a new state.