Listing Through Life

We drove the Scenic Loop Drive around the South Unit of the park in the morning. I was in the back seat and concentrating on looking for stuff, so I was never very sure of where we were. Some of these photos I took through the car window. So here, in no order whatsoever, is what I saw.

Having said that, I think the first two were taken on Friday afternoon at the Painted Canyon Visitor Center.

We got out of the car once to walk the Ridgeline Trail.

Bison bull at rest. We only saw this one and one other much further off in the South Unit.

One of two Coyotes we saw ambling up a hillside.

This Pronghorn came dashing down a draw, not at full-out panic speed, but not dawdling either. I snapped a bunch of photos of it as it dashed past. These two came out best.

Apparently, our friends have seen a life-time supply of Prairie Dogs, so they were  happy to discover that we didn’t have a particular fixation with them. I played the video of the prairie dog calling for Allen over and over an over until he realizes it’s not Allen he’s looking at, but Steve. At which point he begins calling for Steve repeatedly. This became a running joke as we passed several prairie dog towns.

I set my alarm for early Saturday morning and set forth to explore Medora. I was the only one. I could have lit a bonfire in the middle of an intersection and nobody would have noticed.

Here’s our hotel.

Here’s the remains of de Mores’ meat-packing plant.

And another shot facing the sun.

In the next hour, I covered pretty much every street in town. This statue is outside the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Across the street is the Joe Ferris General Store. Roosevelt stayed upstairs upon occasion. We bought bottles of pop downstairs later in the day.

The view down Third Avenue (there are only eight streets in town) at sunrise.

All of Medora from Pacific Avenue. You can look outside town on both ends.

I went back to the motel and showered and met up with the others. We went to Rough Riders Hotel for breakfast. I ordered Custer’s Last Sandwich, which had eggs, hash-browns, cheese, onions and bacon on Texas toast, and which might explain why Custer was moving slow that day. But it was tasty.

As for Medora, it plays up its reputation as a historic town with a great deal of gusto. There are signs all over the place giving its history. Which goes something like this …

Theodore Roosevelt and the Marquis de Mores came here and tried to ranch and failed and left. And then nothing happened for 80 years until a businessman named Harold Schafer (who started the Gold Seal Company which made Mr. Bubble bubble bath) bought up some of the old buildings in town and turned it into the attraction it is today. And though I jest, it is a very pleasant little town in a very pleasant corner of the world.

On Friday evening, we headed a short distance outside Medora to the Pitchfork Steak Fondue. As we arrived, we saw the cooks putting the steaks onto the pitchforks.

I didn’t see them cook the steaks because we were on the other side of the dining area looking at the view. The big house in the middle distance on the right is the Chateau de Mores, the home of Antoine-Amedee-Marie-Vincent Manca Amat de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Mores et de Montemaggiore, commonly called the Marquis de Mores. He was a French adventurer who ranched in the region for a couple years at the same time Roosevelt was here. He opened a meat packing plant, lost a battle with the Chicago meat packers and the railroads, named the town after his wife, Medora, and left. He bounced around the world for a few more years before being killed in North Africa while trying to stir up a revolt against the British. The house can be toured, but this is as close as we got.

The ruins of his meat plant are next to the national park visitor center. You can see the smokestack as a tan stripe below the bluff on the left. Medora is in the middle distance.

We wandered about the area after eating, then filed down into the Burning Hills Amphitheatre, to our seats in the sixth row. The Medora Musical was a mix of comedy and music put on by the Burning Hills Singers and The Coal Diggers band. It was hokey, but amusing and well-done.

After intermission, there was a very weird performance by a group called Cirque Zuma Zuma who performed rhythmic dance and acrobatics to African-style music. One of the performers was a young lady who could contort her body into any position she wished. It was grotesque, and I took no photos. I said to my wife that it wasn’t a talent so much as a deformity. The rest of their show was entertaining, but so out of sync with the rest of the program that I wondered if they’d gotten lost and wandered onto the wrong stage.

The country-western music came back on for another set, and it seemed a lot more fitting with the location.

Theodore Roosevelt visited the North Dakota badlands in 1883 and began a cattle ranch called the Maltese Cross with two other men, about seven miles south of Medora. He soon moved to another site, called the Elkhorn Ranch, about 35 miles north of town. His active ranching career was over by 1887, and he sold all his remaining cattle interests in 1898.

When Roosevelt became president, the cabin was taken apart and shipped to St. Louis for the World’s Fair. It then went to Oregon, and spent 50 years in Fargo before being brought back to the badlands and reconstructed behind the National Park visitor center in Medora.

We toured the tiny three-room cabin with about 30 fellow tourists and the world’s most annoying ranger tour guide. He started every sentence with “Well …,” moved around like a mime and talked to all of us as though we were five.

The desk and rocking chair in the main room are thought to have been Roosevelt’s. It was in this room that he wrote Hunting Trips of a Ranchman.

The trunk in the bedroom also belonged to Teddy.

The Maltese Cross brand can be seen on the end of the one of the outside logs.

I wandered by again the next morning and took a few more photos.

And I took this photo in one of the in-town museums.

The visitor center display had the shirt Roosevelt was wearing when he was shot in Milwaukee.