Oh what a night….. 🤣 Woke up at 7am and it was 67* inside the trailer. What perfect sleeping weather. There is a 30-35 degree day & night temperatures swing here. The 96* is so different from home, less humidity, you don’t sweat as much! Interesting breakfast we had today for we wanted to shower and get on the road ASAP so Tim had coffee & an avocado and me…well a small square piece of chocolate cake & banana! All the food groups, right? 😆
Took the road to the left of the campground now to explore the rest of the park to the end. It’s a 23 mile loop. Along the way we stopped at pull offs and took mile long hikes, stopped to let bison cross the road and watched a big herd of bison, prairie dogs and prong horns graze in the grasslands.
We took the Coal Vein Nature Trail which is where the former coal vein fire was back in 1951-1977. What an amazing site up-top looking across at all the rock layers of the 60 million year geologic history of the badlands. All the layers of the rock…Brick-red is called Clinker which forms when the coal veins catch fire and bake the rocks above changing it to red rock. The the black layer, the coal is the remains of ancient plants & animals. Blue-grey is the Bentonite clay which is ash from distant volcanoes…and last layer is brown and tan which is sandstone, siltstone and mudstone the sediments washed down from the Rocky Mountains. We saw where the Burn out area was…nothing was smoking while we were there! Here we saw a lot of Caprocks. They are harder than the rest of the rocks and act like helmets on top of rocks shielding softer rocks underneath. They were all over. Towards the end of this trail we noticed larger red clinker rocks in clusters. The next trailhead explained these as being Chimney’s. As the coal fire burned deep into the hillside,cracks in the rock layers allowed air to be sucked down into the fire. Fire burned up the cracks and baked the rocks nearby forming vertical “chimneys”. These were the hottest part of the coal fire and baked the rock inside to a hat clinker called porcellanite. As we drove through the rest of the part, we noticed chimney stacks all over. This was a very informative trail! Steep steps in some sections and highly recommend hiking shoes…..unlike me who decided to wear my sandals! Big mistake! 😮
When we got back we made lunch and let the generator run for awhile to charge up the batteries. It’s been an overcast day so the solar panels didn’t charge too much. These 5 days here are with no amenities so we rely on our solar to keep us going! We put up our outdoor shower 🚿 which is working great with me most spectacular view! Tim added an extension to our outdoor shower connection so we have hot & cold water and we’re not filling our grey tank! 😃
Drove down to visitor center to get signals and then to Medora to upload pictures for the blog and of course Diet Coke’s. On the way back saw a few groups of wild horses and a herd of bison with babies. They are so cute. Relaxed till about 8pm then grilled dinner and that’s a wrap! (52 miles today).
Sunday we slept in. Made a great breakfast outside and enjoyed the cool breeze of the morning after a quick rain shower came through. Ran the generator to 100% power and then put a few gallons of water in tank. Throughout the morning and early afternoon we started packing some things up. Enjoyed on last outdoor shower with such an awesome view, then packed up shower room. We took a walk around loop and then found the trail down to the Missouri River. Horse footprints seen along the water. Water was warmer then we thought. Took a ride into Medora, which was still lined with cars (rodeo all weekend in town). Visited the one and only convince store and gas station for our Diet Coke’s! 🥤 Made dinner then drove up to Wind Canyon trail & walked up to the top for a sensational sunset! (26 miles for the day). On our way back to our campsite, saw herds of Buffalo & horses in the fields. Tomorrow’s another adventure!
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