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Theodore Roosevelt National Park

The North Dakota badlands

By Scott Richardson

January 21^st, 2024

North Dakota is out there. An interstate welcome center hands out certificates to join the "Save the best for the last club," a tongue-in-cheek way to recognize that it's not the first destination on anyone's bucket list.

But just off the interstate, 30 minutes from the Montana border, sits Theodore Roosevelt National Park, a hidden gem of the park service. While the South Dakota badlands may get all the glory, their North Dakota counterparts are just as beautiful with their rugged forms, dark skies, and abundant wildlife.

For this trip, I flew into the tiny town of Dickinson, ND, after a 14-hour delay due to a canceled flight in Denver. After gathering supplies on an early morning trip to Walmart, I drove an hour west to Medora to start my visit in the park's south unit.

After crossing the Little Missouri River, which ran up to my knee at its center, I wiped the caked mud from my feet and headed toward the Big Plateau trail. Despite the exposed landscape and overbearing sun, it was an easy hike to the top of the plateau. Feral horses grazed in the distance along the way, and prairie dogs pocketed the landscape with holes.

Prairie dogs darted around the trail, gathering material from shrubs and racing back to their burrows. They shared security duties communally, chirping to warn others of my presence as I hiked by.

Beautiful badlands with layers of colored mud and rock surrounded the trail. Though vegetation was sparse, tiny shrubs dotted the formations, giving them an entirely different look than what I saw in Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

The Boicourt Overlook Trail straddles a ridge for a short walk to an expansive view of multi-colored buttes and rolling grassland.

The abundance of wildlife within the south unit is staggering. Bison jams are common as the animals slowly walk down the road to find new spots to graze. Along the way, I also saw elk, deer, rabbits, porcupines, coyotes, pronghorns, prairie dogs, and wild horses.

To close my first day in Theodore Roosevelt, I climbed Buck Hill and watched the sun slowly set, draping distant buttes into sweet, warm light.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park features some of the darkest skies in the country. Far from any significant development, it's a fantastic place to stargaze and see the Milky Way shine vividly.

The Dakota Nights Astronomy Festival was taking place during my visit. Each night, I drove to the Peaceful Valley Ranch to gaze through telescopes, learn from night sky enthusiasts, and marvel at how much of the sky I could see.

After being serenaded to sleep by a pack of coyotes, I woke up and left camp well before sunrise. Wildlife was very active as dawn broke, and several herds of bison delayed my trip as they slowly walked along the road.

After sunrise, I left the South Unit by taking a series of gravel roads north from the top of the park loop road. After a while, I popped out onto Route 85 and headed to the North Unit.

The North Unit was wilder and more rugged than the South. Its landscapes seemed emptier and more expansive and lonely.

I spent hours taking in the scenes along the Caprock Coulee Trail. Tiny pockets of caprocks and dry washes were endlessly fascinating to find interesting patterns and textures.

The landscape looked like it had been left over after a middle school art class. Colors spilled onto rocks, and bright red pockets of pebbles looked like they had been splattered carelessly. Remnants of eroded toadstools and petrified wood hung around the landscape like discarded ceramics projects lining an art classroom.

The variety of textures was mesmerizing.

One of the oddities I was excited to see was the Cannonball Concretions. Sitting on the roadside at a pullout, these large circular boulders jut out of the landscape, unlike anything else surrounding them. Unfortunately, previous visitors have carved their names and initials into the cannonballs, forever marring their appearance to the detriment of anyone visiting them.

I hated to leave the empty beauty of the North Unit, but my campsite was in the South Unit, and wildlife was abundant along the road, so I packed up and headed out at dusk.

I broke camp early the following day and headed for the South Unit loop road for a beautiful sunrise. Wildlife was out in full force once again, and the early morning light accentuated the textures of the badlands.

A young bison calf grazes early in the morning.

The end of summer heat was unrelenting, as was the wind whipping up dust clouds as I drove west of Medora to the Petrified Forest Loop trailhead. Petrified stumps and logs decorate the landscape in the valleys below the trailhead.