Medora

Cool morning and we sleep in late. Linda showers while I make breakfast, then after breakfast I shower and Linda cleans up. We don’t leave the campsite until 11:30. We stop at the park visitor center, a beautiful stone and wood CCC building, housing a museum about the native Americans that lived here.

Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, visitor center

They also had a partially reconstructed village of the Mandan tribe. I hate to admit that I never heard of this tribe, they had a very unique culture compared to the other plains tribes.  We didn’t get on the road until nearly 1:00PM.

Mandan tribe had a hill side covered with these earthen huts

Nice and cool in here on a hot day

We stop at the first of two visitor centers for the Roosevelt National Park, this one along  Interstate 94. I buy my usual obligatory National Park poster, to add to my collection which I plaster the walls with at our apartment in Utah when we spend the winter there.

The other visitor center is in the town of Medora at the entrance to the south area of the park. We drive into the park to see if there are any available spaces at the park camp ground. One left, but not very desirable, so we head into town to the commercial RV Park that has power, which means we have AC since temperatures are in the low 90’s. We stopped briefly to watch a group of Buffalo’s in the middle of a prairie dog town. Figured we will take pictures tomorrow when we drive through the whole park.

We have dinner at the RV and later walk into town in search of ice cream. Must be early in the tourist season, because both Ice cream places are closed before we get there. We had to settle for ice cream sandwiches at a convenience store.