Medora North Dakota, home of the badlands and Teddy Roosevelt national park. This is the final stop for our day of driving, and absolutely overwhelming o the eye. During the drive Joy especially enjoyed the rock piles in all the farm fields, where they obviously found rocks while trying to farm this land, and just put various piles throughout the field. It is hard to describe, but the rocks are so pretty, it seems like a waste for them just to sit there. I can't imagine how hard it is to farm this rocky land.

One the bad lands become visible on the highway it is just breath taking! Fabulos rounded and colorful valleys and mountains everywhere you can see. We took the road to our campground and found a great little spot behind the Little Missouri River with this massive wall of rock behind us as our view! Fabulous! Other than the horribly loud train horn that seemed to go off every hour, this was great spot to camp. The kids are still learning, along with their parents, what camping is really all about. It turns out that nobody really knows how to sit down and relax, and not be continually entertained with some sort of toy, movie, video game or computer. Just about every kid has fallen and skinned a knee, but Dad and the kids finally found a quiet little path to the river, and skipped rocks for about 30 minutes for fun. We went and got Mom to show her our favorite spot on the river before going back to town for ice cream. Of course, leaving our trail by the river we came across what a park ranger later told me was probably a pretty big bull snake, which scared the daylights out of pretty much everyone. Yep, this thing slithered right by the whole family as we walked down the path. Gavin wanted to go home and everyone else was pretty upset too.

We still made it to town to find ice cream and the most intricate mini city kids park I've ever seen. It was built from wood and had a whole town to run and play through. Bank, store, slides, swings, you name it! We played until sun down and went back for our first night in the tent. We survived, and packed up the van and headed out the next day. A quick drive through the park and we headed for Montana, look out!