August 18--Theodore Roosevelt National Park to Jamestown, ND

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Thursday August 18, 2011 Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ND 59 degrees with a mixed sky of clouds and blue sky. Starting mileage at 15624. Left camp at 7:45 to be at the stables by 8 for our ride at 8:30.

Drove the couple miles to the stables, got checked in and issued our helmets. The wranglers lined the group of us up and selected the horse for each of us as we stood on a raised step to make it easier to mount. When my turn came, I mounted my horse with help and I knew immediately that I was in trouble. My legs didn't want to spread that far and, therefore, my hips were really hurting. While the rest of the group got mounted, I sat on my horse trying to decide if the hip pain was temporary or not. Finally, made the decision that I was going to be in pain the whole 1 1/2 hour trip, as my hip pain just wouldn't let up, so, told the wrangler I didn't think I could/should go. He was more than ok with it, and gave me back my money, which I didn't expect him to do. Valerie went ahead and took her ride. She said she only saw more prairie dogs as far as animals went but, she enjoyed the ride in general, I think. Was only a little sore the next day, which surprised her.

It was about 11:00 when we took off out of the Park traveling Interstate 94 that crosses straight through the Park, toward Bismarck, the capitol of North Dakota. Seen from the Interstate at New Salem is the World's Largest Holstein Cow at a height of 38 feet by a length of 50 feet and her weight is 12,000 lbs. She was constructed in 1974 of fiberglass and is named, “Salem Sue.” She was built to honor the local dairy industry, but we sure didn't see the dairy farms along our route. We pulled into town to take pictures and decided to stop for some lunch at a local restaurant. All I can say about the experience was that it wasn't one of the best ideas we have ever had.

Crossed into the Central Time zone that starts in the northeast corner of the border with Montana and goes south for several hundred miles before it then heads east about 75 miles, zigging and zagging from the border along various imaginary lines and then heads south through the middle of the State. How can you work with something like that? The ranger at TR National park said that the North Unit of the park was on a different time zone than the South Unit, even though they are right above/below each other.

When we drove into the area around the Missouri River and you could see where flooding had happened with many sandbags still in place. Looking down on the river itself as we crossed the bridge, you could see it was still at flood stage.

Found the 19 story capitol building without any problem, since in looms above the town. There are no other skyscrapers in town--nothing above about 6 stories--this is not a city, but a disorganized town. We parked in front of the capitol and took some pictures of the building, flowers, and the nice bronze statue of Sacagawea. After this, we got gas at $3,69 a gal. She took 18.875 gals for a cost of $69.82 total. Mileage at this point was 15777. We then continued on Interstate 94 towards Fargo.

We had planned to go south of Bismarck along the Missouri River to Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park turning off at Mandan. But, when we mentioned this to some RV people we met along the way, they told us the park was closed due to flooding. Looking at the map and camping books we decided that the rest of the camping and parks that were south of Bismarck were most likely flooded out also, so decided to continue on interstate 94 to some of the lake campgrounds north of the town of Jamestown.

When we got to Jamestown we drove north through town looking for one of several large reservoirs/lakes. Every road we turned down to go to the lakeside campgrounds listed in our AAA camping book, had sawhorses blocking the roads with "road closed" signs on them. We were aware from news reports that this area had sustained some wide spread flooding also, so turned back into town to see if we could find a place to park/camp for the night. When we crossed the Interstate, I looked up and spotted a Wal-mart tucked back behind a K-mart that we had seen before. With a sigh of relief, we parked in the Wal-mart lot, had dinner, and called it a night.

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