The tuning process on the truck requires plugging the OBDII (On Board Diagnostics II) into the truck port, then connecting that to his computer, then getting online so the tuner, who is in Missouri, can remote in to his desktop and drive the OBD. We didn’t have enough cell reception at the campground, so we stopped in Richardton so the tuner, Garrison, could install what he’d done based on the data he downloaded when I was grocery shopping. I took the dogs for a walk through Richardton from one end of the sidewalk to the other, and found the number of closed businesses depressing. I don’t know if it’s post covid situation, or if the economy in rural North Dakota is just really bad. The highlight of my walk was going by the fire department, where they were doing a program for local children, and I got to see Smoky the Bear in real life. This may not seem like a big deal, except that when I was a kid I didn’t have any posters in my room of whatever the popular teen crush was, just a poster of Smoky the Bear which I may still have packed away in a box somewhere. Grown up me knows it was just a man in a bear suit with pants and boots and a hat, but it still made me smile.
While I was walking, Tom and Garrison got the truck set so it was ready for a road test, so we got back on the highway and headed for Theodore Roosevelt National Park. This park is at the very west side of North Dakota, and has three units: North Unit, South Unit, and Elkhorn Ranch Unit. We didn’t go to the Elkhorn Ranch Unit because it involves hours of travel on dirt roads, but we visited both the North and South Units. We started at the Painted Canyon Visitor Center, which is a rest stop off the highway and offers some vistas of the Badlands. We then went to the main visitor center for the South Unit in Medora, which is the base for the scenic road that is supposed to loop through the park, although at the moment it’s an out and back since they’re still working on fixing a culvert that washed out over the winter. We drove the out and back road, stopping to see the sights along the way.
While I was walking, Tom and Garrison got the truck set so it was ready for a road test, so we got back on the highway and headed for Theodore Roosevelt National Park. This park is at the very west side of North Dakota, and has three units: North Unit, South Unit, and Elkhorn Ranch Unit. We didn’t go to the Elkhorn Ranch Unit because it involves hours of travel on dirt roads, but we visited both the North and South Units. We started at the Painted Canyon Visitor Center, which is a rest stop off the highway and offers some vistas of the Badlands. We then went to the main visitor center for the South Unit in Medora, which is the base for the scenic road that is supposed to loop through the park, although at the moment it’s an out and back since they’re still working on fixing a culvert that washed out over the winter. We drove the out and back road, stopping to see the sights along the way.
We left the park and drove to some Little Missouri River National Grassland land with dispersed camping sites. We parked on the edge of a bluff, which it turned out we were lucky to get since most of the sites filled up before dark.
In the morning, we continued down the dirt road through the National Grassland and past some ranches to the trailhead for the Petrified Forest area. A 3 mile out and back trail winds through the badlands to a basin with a lot of petrified wood. Unlike the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, this area has very few logs, but has many stumps. We also saw bison on the way in, which were the first wildlife we had seen other than prairie dogs.
We left the Petrified Forest area and drove to the North Unit. It’s supposed to be a straight shot up SR85, but a culvert is also out on that road, so we had to take a detour which probably added 20 miles on dirt roads to the trip, but which was still better than the way the park service was suggesting we go. The North Unit is smaller than the South Unit, with a 14-mile road running from east to west through the park. We drove that road out and back, stopping to see highlights along the way.
Cannonball concretions
We left the park and drove to the Summit Campground, another free National Grasslands campground just south of the park. This campground was sort of strange, because it’s just three parking places along a little dirt road that loops off of SR85. Each parking place has a ramada and a fire ring, but the campground is only about 200 yards from the highway, and you can see and hear the vehicles whizzing by on the other side of the grass. We also found a lot of garbage strewn on the ground, and while it wasn’t as bad as the place in New Mexico where we found the dead dog, we wouldn’t have wanted to spend more than a night there.
It didn’t ultimately matter, but throughout our time at the TRNP, we were always a little out of sorts. We had crossed into the Mountain Time Zone just before reaching the Schnell Recreation Area, and my watch had switched, but Tom’s hadn’t. The North Unit of the park is right on the line between Central Time and Mountain Time, which made Tom’s watch right again, but mine kept switching back and forth. The Summit Campground is technically in Mountain Time, but both of our watches kept switching back and forth there. It didn’t matter because we didn’t have anyplace we had to be at a specific time, but we spent the whole time we were in the area not really knowing what time it was. We ended up leaving for our next stop, the Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, an hour earlier than intended since we were heading back into Central Time until we crossed into Mountain Time in Montana. The Fort Union Trading Post also straddles the states and the time zones, so our watches endured another few hours of confusion.
It didn’t ultimately matter, but throughout our time at the TRNP, we were always a little out of sorts. We had crossed into the Mountain Time Zone just before reaching the Schnell Recreation Area, and my watch had switched, but Tom’s hadn’t. The North Unit of the park is right on the line between Central Time and Mountain Time, which made Tom’s watch right again, but mine kept switching back and forth. The Summit Campground is technically in Mountain Time, but both of our watches kept switching back and forth there. It didn’t matter because we didn’t have anyplace we had to be at a specific time, but we spent the whole time we were in the area not really knowing what time it was. We ended up leaving for our next stop, the Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, an hour earlier than intended since we were heading back into Central Time until we crossed into Mountain Time in Montana. The Fort Union Trading Post also straddles the states and the time zones, so our watches endured another few hours of confusion.
