Theodore Roosevelt National Park

 From Voyageur National Park we spent a long day driving west across Minnesota and North Dakota before spending the night in Bismark. The following morning we drove the last couple of hours to Roosevelt National Park. The park has a north unit and a south unit which are about an hour drive apart. The north unit has more spectacular scenery and the south unit has more animals which are closer to the road to see.

Our first stop was the visitor center overlooking Painted Canyon. This is before you leave the freeway and enter the south unit.

Painted Canyon as viewed from the visitor center.

The main wildlife you see in the south unit are pairie dogs and bison. The pairie dogs live in large colonies that are all over the park with many right next to the road. They always one or more watching out for trouble and as soon as you park along the road and get out of your car they start chirping out warnings to the colony.

 

There are also Bison all over the park, a few by themselves and others in large herds. We stated with photographing some as soon as we entered the park.

Later while driving through the park we came across a herd walking next to the road with some crossing the road right in front of us, they are huge and a little scary. They could do a lot of damage to you or your car if they wanted although most of the time they seem to just ignore us and walk around the cars.

In addition to prairie dogs and bison we saw mule deer (I think this is correct, they didn't look like white-tail deer).

We also saw a pair of wild horses. They were busy eating and I wasn't able to get any good photos of them.

The view from the River Bend Overlook Trail.

Oxbow Overlook on the Little Missouri River. The view in the north unit were amazing and we did see wild turkeys (hidden in the grass, no good photos) and the bison herd which was too far from the road for any good photos.