Hey everyone it's Madalyn and this video is about
five things you should know before going to Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
If you stick around to the end we're going to discuss a few things we wish we had known
before we went. The first thing you should know is that this is a fantastic park for wildlife
there are plenty of bison, horses and prairie dogs to see on your trip.
Another thing you should know is that this park has three separate units so you should keep that
in mind when you're planning your visit. We only had one day at this park so we explored
the south unit. We'll have to make another trip back to see the other areas of the park.
The third thing you should know is that Medora is a great little town
right outside the south unit of the park. It's full of history complete with a cowboy museum
and a theater where they do shows about Teddy Roosevelt.
The fourth thing you should know about North Dakota's only National Park
is that it is a great spot for some wide open spaces. In fact that is what Theodore
Roosevelt loved about this area so much. There are plenty of opportunities to get out and hike
around, so make sure you bring your camera so you can snap some awesome panorama shots. The
final thing you should know is that you should brush up on some history before you go
the history of the area and knowing a little bit about Teddy Roosevelt will only make your
trip more enjoyable. What you learn beforehand will only enhance your visit while you're there.
So we told you at the start of the video we'd talk about some things we wish we knew before we went
so here's a little bit of our self Q&A.
The park is located in a pretty remote area so where should you stay so this is one of the things
that we struggled with because there's not a lot of hotel options around the park. There's a couple
chain hotels in Medora but we were actually coming from Billings and we ended up staying in Fargo
so we had a long day of driving and since we were there in the summer it was a long day of daylight,
but we really didn't get to spend as much time in the park as we really wanted to
and so that was kind of one of the things that you know we left a little bit to come back to.
And so if i had to do it again i might consider staying in Bismarck
or there's another town not too far from Medora it's a little smaller called Dickinson and
those are probably your best bets for where you're going to find lodging and
you're still going to have to have a little bit of a drive before you get to the park.
Now if you have an RV as we've said in the past you know an RV is a game changer so
you know where you're staying when you have an RV so you probably don't need to
be listening to this advice but i think that if you're gonna do the park in just one day
it becomes difficult because first off when you're passing through that area
where are you passing through to? Because we drove from Montana to Fargo and Billings,
Montana to Fargo in one day this is a long drive. It was a long day and we've said this before and
we'll probably say it again in future videos staying outside of national parks is always
kind of a difficult thing you have to make sure you do your research and plan around that because
um and far in advance because they do tend to book up quickly and they can get really pricey and
and you know we don't mind spending money on a hotel when it's a nice hotel but these hotels tend
to get really pricey for just regular old regular roadside motels. We're talking over 200 bucks a
night and so we think that you know this is one of those parks if you want to spend multiple
days in you got to figure out whether or not you can camp there if you're familiar with camping
you might have to bite the bullet and spend more money to stay in Medora or if you're going to do
a passing through if you're coming from the west staying in Bismarck is a decent option
if you're heading west from the east there's i mean it's like a four-hour drive to billings
so there's there's almost nothing. Yeah we had a long day of driving and then we did get some great
park time but we did leave some things on the table that we would definitely like to go back to.
What didn't you do in the park that you wish you had?
So this is one of those things that i saw and it was kind of one of those we're gonna do this
park in one day and the weird part about this park and you'll see this sometimes
is that it's not contiguous so there's multiple areas of the park that are separated by
farmland or whatever and so there's a northern uh part of this park and i think it's about an
hour drive and also in that same direction is where Teddy Roosevelt built his cabin
and which is he had the cabin out there he loved this area he loved how remote it was
and i really would have wanted to go to that cabin in fact if i had planned a little better
we could have done it but not really knowing the area and being familiar with it that's something
that we didn't do and it will be first thing on my list next time we're back in that area that
said i don't know how often we're going to get to the west side of North Dakota but it really
is a beautiful area and so that was something I'm looking forward to doing next time we go back.
Yes that's where planning really comes into play because we were like oh we'll just sometimes
sometimes we do a lot of research sometimes we don't do as much and we knew we were going to be
driving through this area and we wanted to stop in at this park and um we really missed out on
um seeing the other half of it so definitely in the future sometime when we find ourselves
back in North Dakota we want to go explore more because it was a beautiful park the south unit
was absolutely gorgeous with tons of animals and tons of hiking and really vast wide open spaces
So one of the things that I have to always remind myself of is when we're planning
days like this especially when we're driving that if something says it takes three hours
from you know city to city you're driving on the interstate it just add like 25 percent
to that because whether you're stopping for gas stopping for traffic stopping for
construction there just always seems to be something and so even when you start looking
at these big wide open areas you're like okay you know it's a three hour and a 15 minute trip,
it never, it always takes longer. If you like this video please remember to like subscribe and
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if you want to see more from Theodore Roosevelt National Park we have a vlog up on our channel now
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