Theodore Roosevelt NP

We left the Glacier National Park area and made several stops working our way across the big state of Montana. Our next milestone location was Theodore Roosevelt National Park but we had some interesting times on our way there.

Problems in Great Falls

Our first stop on the journey across Montana was in Great Falls. We pulled into Dick’s RV Park and ran into problems with our auto leveling system during setup. It seemed to work sporadically when retracting the jacks or pulling in the slides. Extending the jacks or the slides worked fine. After failing to get a local RV repair facility to help, we called Lippert tech support for help. The tech was very helpful and we quickly determined that our polarity reversing solenoid was flaky. Trying to get one delivered during the three days we were at this campground wasn’t going to work so we visited all the RV dealerships and repair facilities in town. Bish’s RV (formerly Gardner’s RV) was able to get us a replacement overnight. We picked it up the evening before departure and installed it in less then 30 minutes and everything has been fine since. Pretty successful for our first major “oh-oh, now what?” moment.

All wasn’t bad in Great Falls. We were very close to a bike trail that we utilized for both running and biking. The trail goes along the Missouri River and by the falls that gives the town its name. It was quite windy on the day we rode the trail, but we didn’t realize how windy until we turned around to come back. Let’s just say the ride out was a heck of a lot easier then the return trip. We had a great time seeing some of the sights that Lewis and Clark saw under the guidance of Sacagawea.

Hiking in Livingston

Our next stop across the expanse of Montana was in Livingston. We stayed at Osen’s RV park, a small and very well maintained park just outside of town. We looked for a hike on All Trails and found what some reviewers claimed to be a Montana bucket list hike. It turned out to be longer and more grueling than originally thought. To be honest, we didn’t quite make it to the end but were close enough with just several hundred yards more to go. We were already exhausted and the official trail was snowed in and others were climbing over boulders to finish the hike so we opted to turn around and head back. The hike had over 3600 feet of elevation gain, ending at just about 9,000 feet. The views as we hiked were simply gorgeous and, even though it was tough, we enjoyed it very much.

When we got back and showered, we decided to hit up the local brewery before they closed. This was an interesting brewery that shared a symbiotic relationship with the Mexican restaurant next door. You could order off the restaurant menu while in the brewery and they would phone your order in. The waiter would come through an employees only door on the shared wall of the businesses to deliver your meal. Very convenient and I’m sure beneficial to both businesses.

We left Livingston one day prior to our reservations beginning in Medora, ND and our visit to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We spent that extra night at Beaver Creek Brewery in Wibaux, MT. This was our second Harvest Host brewery in the state of Montana. The beer was pretty good and the food not too bad.

Medora, ND – Where’s our mail?

Boots campground in Medora was not the best RV park we’ve stayed in but at least our site wasn’t the worse one in the park. It was a couple miles out of town and had the strangest setup for a park. It appeared the owners were trying to squeeze as many sites as they can into the property they had.

Because we were going to be here for six nights, we decided to have our mail delivered to the local post office. The mail left our mail forwarding facility in Box Elder, SD on Monday and was due to arrive in Medora on Friday. Five days to get from western South Dakota to western North Dakota? OK, at least it will arrive before we leave on Sunday. Or will it? Come Friday, it had not arrived so we visited the post office on Saturday morning during the hour and forty five minutes they were open. Turns out the package was still in Bismarck, where it had arrived on Wednesday evening. Guess where our next stop was going to be? That’s right, Bismarck.

The nice USPS employee in Medora took a note and said she would see if it could be routed to a post office in Bismarck for us to pick up while there. We were concerned that this piece of mail would follow us across the country so we wanted to keep tabs on it. In short, it got to Medora on Monday morning (we were in Bismarck) and was flagged to be forwarded on. We called the Medora post office and asked them to hang onto it and we’d be in to pick it up. So after having the oil changed in the truck on Monday morning, we drove the 2 hours back to Medora to get our mail. The good news in all this is that it was raining in Bismarck while we made the trip and was clear when we returned.

We did do a couple hikes in the national park while we were there. Our first hike was in the southern portion of the park and required us to wade across the Little Missouri River. Luckily we had read about this prior to the hike and were prepared. As we got to the river within the first quarter mile of the hike, we contemplated the best location to cross. Just then a man and his adult daughter came up and said they saw people crossing the evening before and to just head straight across and it will not get much more than knee deep. We let them go first so we could witness the crossing ourselves and then made the crossing without incident.

The rest of the hike was very enjoyable. We walked through wooded areas and through grassy plains. We walked through several prairie dog towns and had to leave the path in order to avoid a bison herd. We came across a wild horse that had the marking of a cow. It was very strange. When we finished the hike, we stopped at the visitor’s center. This is the first visitor’s center that has been open in all the national parks we’ve visited this summer.

The other hike we took was in the northern portion of the park. This was a little over an hours drive and a different time zone away. The first portion of this loop hike was a nature trail where we learned about the geography of the area. After that, it climbed a few hundred feet and offered spectacular views of the badlands and river valley.

Another highlight of our stay in Medora was observing and photographing the Neowise Comet. It was practically a new moon and our campground was far enough away from the small town that it had very little light pollution. This resulted in a picture of the comet against a vast field of stars. The dark sky also allowed for some pictures of the Milky Way, which unfortunately was in the opposite direction from the comet.

Bismarck, ND

As mentioned earlier, our next and final stop in North Dakota was Bismarck. We had learned a few weeks prior that a nice couple we met last spring in South Dakota was staying at the Bismarck KOA for a month. Timing and route were such that spending a few nights in the same campground to get to know them better was a no brainer. As we’ve mentioned before, as your network of friends from the full time RVing community expands, your travels will often involve stops for the sole purpose of meeting up.

Besides the aforementioned oil change appointment and the unplanned trip back to Medora, we spent our brief stay socializing with Joel and Tracy as much as possible. A couple afternoons at our rig and a couple late evenings around a campfire at theirs made for a very enjoyable stay in Bismarck. One thing we’ve noticed spending the mid-summer in these northern reaches of the lower 48 is that it stays light well into the evening. Late twilight lasts until well past 10:00 PM and it doesn’t get truly dark until after 11:00, which is about the time we ended our final evening around the campfire.