Rain Sleet Go Away

The night started out a little loud. Lots of cars coming and going and several gunshots going off (they sounded like they were right outside the RV). Side not - according to my niece, Everbody on the Rez carries at least one gun. It is very much a gun culture. Anyways things finally settled down and I was able to sleep. During the night the rain started, a strong rain, but the troubling thing was the wind. All I could think of was that I was going to have to drive in this weather the next day. Not fun and pretty scary.

When we woke up, it was foggy misty and not much visibility.  Barb and I decided that because of the wind, it would be too hard to try to drive to Fort Union Trading Post, my last NoDak national Site.  We decided to settle for the Juniper Campground which is the Northern Unit of the Teddy Roosevelt National Park.  Driving was horrible, nothing worse than a cross wind - in North Dakota there is nothing to stop the wind. It actually started to sleet and I had frozen sleet on my windshield.

We drove into Juniper and again there was modify around. Guess nobody wants to camp when it is sleeting out. The drive into Juniper was very impressive, from the six buffalo that greeted us as we walked in, to the amazing rock formations along the way. Looked very much like the Bad Lands that everybody has seen as they drive west along 94.  Drove into the campground, looked around. Since the road that you can take to tour the Northern Unit was closed, there was not much to do - forget hiking, we would have been sucked into never never land with the mud. After much consultation, we decided to drive another hour and a half down to the Southern Unit. It was a little closer to home, there were more open trails and just more opportunities for fun.

When we got to the visitor center in the south several momentous things happened. One, the sun came out for a minute or two and secondly, I found a wood tick attached to me. The first one of the season. We watched an orientation film about the park and then found a lovely campground site that is nestled in the juniper trees overlooking some of the hills. Again, no water or electricity but nature makes up for that.

Barb decided that after all that terrible driving I would need to be plied with wine. She is a good travel buddy. I'm rather enjoying this part of the journey.