World United States North Dakota Medora

Arlyce and Mike On The Road To Alaska

In Western North Dakota At Last May 31, 2009

Sunday is the 31st of May and Nathan’s birthday. We were lucky and helped celebrate his 11th just a day before leaving, so birthday wishes were already passed out. Besides, as Nathan, Step and Mike are on their way to Hilton Head by now for their vacation. After a quick breakfast and packup, we headed about 60 miles North to the Northern unit of Teddy’s park. We have not been there before and it is on the way so why not? The Northern unit is a bit less rugged and more green with Bison the main animal to see, which we did. After touring the park we moved on North to Fort Union National Historic Site and Fort Buford State Historic site. Both are near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Little Missouri rivers. Fort Union is quite impressive from the outside while inside we found several park employees in period costume explaining the history of the fort as well as the activities that took place there. Originally built in early 1800’s by a commercial fur trading company, the fort was later taken over by the military and expanded to include facilities for a large garrison. Abandoned in the late 1800’s, the fort and the large commanding officers home are now restored. We watched demonstrations on how a bison skin is scraped for tanning and how the poles were interlaced and bound to for the cone support for a teepee. Fort Buford was also interesting except very little of what is now there is original except for the commandants home. Several other buildings have been built to add to the display but are not original. That night we stayed at a small campground owned by the State of Montana located at the confluence of the two rivers. There were few amenities except for electric plug-ins which we took advantage of. The best part was that there was no fee to use the CG. We were the only ones there over night except for a boat load of drunken sailors who brought their boat to the nearby ramp to load onto a trailer. It was not a pretty site. They finally got it done but not without a lot of noise and cursing. We watched a number of water birds feeding just before we turned in. The best was a Grebe who swam by in the current feeding on stuff from the bottom.

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