We drove from the Summit Campground south of the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park to the Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, which straddles the North Dakota/Montana border. It’s a small site and isn’t much more than the partially reconstructed fort, but it was good for a walk with the dogs, since dogs were allowed everywhere, even in the fort.
The mosquitos were again a major annoyance, so we left the fort and drove back into North Dakota to see the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. The state has a very nice visitor center with a partially paved trail and lots of informational signs, but the mosquitos were also really bad at that site, and you couldn’t really see the actual confluence because of the trees, so after reading signs about how various members of the Louis & Clark party abandoned the group at that point because of the mosquitos, we got back in the truck to head into Montana.
After some hit and miss campsites through North Dakota, we were pleased to find that Montana has tons of free to cheap places to camp. On the eastern side of the state, these are mostly fishing access sites along the river. The first one we found was Matthews Recreation Area, which actually has a camp host who is in the only official campsite. He told us to park wherever we wanted, so we pulled into a big field and watched a beautiful sunset over the Yellowstone River. We also walked along the river and found a gopher snake, which made us glad we’d decided to park in the field rather than one of the riverside spots.
We left Matthews RA early the next morning because high winds were predicted from midday through the afternoon, so we were parked at the Bighorn Battlefield National Historical Monument in time for breakfast before attempting to tour the site.