At this point in our trip we have decided to head back home. We are on beauty, grandeur, stupidity, consumerism overload. We have seen so much raw nature, so much nature tainted by love of the American dollar, so many people...time to head back to quiet Mt. Vernon. Teddy Roosevelt National Park just happened to be in our path home so we planned a stop there. We drove through desolate and desperate Indian Reservation land to get to North Dakota where we were met with mile after mile of crop land. Suddenly rising out of the flatness were great buttes and rocky crags. We found a pleasant site and had a fairly uneventful afternoon and nutritious meal. The girls all set out for the evening ranger program and I stayed with Biesel to read a bit. The ranger program was interrupted by a herd, 100 head or so, of rut season Bison. This is, of course, pretty ironic in that Teddy had a penchant for killing such game. Big gray-headed male leader guy was nose to tail with one of the younger female hotties. Other males were challenging. The ladies were doing there best to ignore the flagrant displays of machismo and bravura. Meanwhile, back at camp I'm hearing snorting and grunting and stomping that sounds pretty darn close. I open the camper door to see a great big male in our camp site chomping down on the dry grass and scratching himself on the big oak outside our door. I spent the next 20 minutes watching the herd move across the park following the barked orders of alpha boy. The girls came back right before dark escorted by some other campers with flash lights and nerve. They had been surrounded for most of the evening and hadn't even been able to get to the bathhouse to tinkle.
In the morning we headed out toward Minneapolis and a surprise for the girls. Throughout the trip the girls had been noticing these great big hotels with indoor water parks with tube slides penetrating the walls to the outdoors. We decided to surprise them with a night in a hotel, a nice meal, some swimming, and most importantly...showers. We got clean and headed out to a highly recommended family owned Mexican Restaurant and had an incredible and incredibly inexpensive meal. The girls had such a great time playing in the pool and mommy and daddy had a relaxing time in the huge hot tub in our master suite. It was the perfect gluttonous ending to our trip. Next time: big big rain, storm chasing, coming home.
