Here we are, continuing down the loop road in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Didn’t have time to go all the way through the park, so I was very happy to see all the wildlife that I did in just a quick tour.

I’d pulled off into a trailhead parking area to turn around and throw some garbage into a can. While walking back to the vehicle, these two buffalo came over and started to scratch themselves on the parking area posts. They must have had some serious itches!

Over the years I’ve gazed upon many buffalo, and I never tire of seeing them. There is something ancient and wild about these massive, shaggy creatures. It would have been a truly amazing experience to come across one of the immense herds that used to roam this country.

The sun was getting lower and lower, lending a warm, brilliant light to the slopes and trees that bordered the large areas now darkened by shadows.

What marvelous colors to be found in a prairie landscape this time of year; bright yellows, yellow-greens, olive-greens, silvery greens, golds, ochres, tans, rusts, apricots, oranges, and reds.

I’m so grateful for the people who had the wisdom, tenacity, generosity, and courage to set aside some of the best land in the country so that generations to come would have the opportunity to experience the wonder of the natural world.

Can you see why they’re called Mule Deer?

This spectacular country has an exhilarating effect on me. It did the same thing for Theodore Roosevelt, too, and he remarked that he might not have become President of the United States if it hadn’t been for the time he spent out here.  I highly recommend the book Roosevelt in the Bad Lands by Hermann Hagedorn if you’d like to learn about the challenges he faced and the beauty he came to cherish in the wild Dakota landscape.

Can’t you just feel the warm September sun?

Well, here we are, back in Medora, headed home for Bowman. Just wanted to show you the beautiful petunias still blooming in this old covered wagon box. I must say that the gardeners for this historic town really add a lot of color and interest with all their bright flowers. It couldn’t have been easy keeping them growing in such a dry summer.

Some views from the East River Road

What a lovely, lovely day out in the Badlands of North Dakota. Sometimes the beauty of it all can be almost too much, and it’s great to be able to share it with someone else. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

We’ve now left the town of Medora and entered Theodore Roosevelt National Park. This is a view toward the south, looking out at Medora from the park. The hill in the back left is where we entered town from the East River Road.

All throughout the park, and on the way up here, different scenes bring back memories of flowers and animals I have seen on previous excursions. One autumn there were a couple of buffalo grazing the hills in the background of this picture.

While the blues and golds of autumn are a crisp and invigorating combination, waking the senses to a symphony of color,  the whites and greys of the winter season to come create a more subdued, sometimes melancholy, melody.

Mule Deer behind Tree Branches

Buffalo Resting on the Prairie

Wild Turkey Heading for Cover

Blue Sky in the Badlands

Prairie Dog Having a Prairie Snack

Caprocks in Sunlight

September Slopes

Buffalo in September Badlands

Buffalo Wallowing in the Dusty Grass

What a tonic to see wild animals resting and grazing on a beautiful, warm, September afternoon. This country never fails to refresh my mind, eye, and spirit.

Young Buffalo with New Horns

Buffalo Bull on a Prairie Walk

Think this will wrap up Part III of our September journey through the Badlands. Check back for the next installment of buffalo, deer, clouds, hills, and autumn color in the magnificent back country of North Dakota.

So here we are, continuing the tour of the North Dakota Badlands between Amidon and Medora, heading up the East River Road. The hills were all decked out in shades of yellow, orange, red, and olive, while the blue sky pitched in with some delicate white clouds just to set things off.

All spring and summer long, I was happy to just have some good cloud days, so you can imagine how pleased I was to have these wispy cloud shapes along with some Badlands scenery.

Sometimes there are so many beautiful views, you pass by something that really should be appreciated. That was the case with this colorful draw, and I decided to go back and give it the attention it deserved.

The roads are paved with scoria, the same material that is found on the hilltops in the Badlands. It is so dry out here that thick clouds of dust hang in the air after a vehicle passes by.

Sometimes I’ll go back and shoot a view that is just to the right or left of a previous shot, in case I decide to make a panoramic drawing of that landscape in the future.

Medora Post Office

I pulled into Medora, picked up my pastel drawings at Circle C Gallery, then walked around town. It is a quaint western town, nestled in between the bluffs of the Badlands and the Little Missouri River. People from the area do an outstanding job of gardening and landscaping throughout the village. I wonder how many postal offices have a front garden as colorful as the one here.

Cowboy Boot Bird Nests at the Medora Post Office

The Harold Schafer Heritage Center

I love the way people have incorporated native materials into the lovely little boulevard gardens in Medora.

This is where Clay Jenkinson recently portrayed Theodore Roosevelt as the newly inaugurated President of the United States. There was a packed house for the performance.

This is a nice time of the year to visit Medora. The large numbers of tourists are gone, the weather is mild, and some of the stores are still open.

This vine was pretty earlier in the year, but now it’s a flaming beauty.

 Statue of the Marquis de Mores

Statue of a Local Bronc Rider

This country has produced a lot of tough, skilled horsemen, cattlemen, and rodeo performers. My great-aunt was married to a man whose family broke wild horses from the Badlands.

Joe Ferris General Store

 Joe Ferris was the man who served as Theodore Roosevelt’s guide during his great buffalo hunting adventure in September of 1883.

Petunias near the General Store

Flowers and Petrified Wood in front of the General Store

Buffalo Sculpture at Cowboy Hall of Fame

Longhorn Cattle Sculpture at Cowboy Hall of Fame 

Berries on a Colorful Vine

Large Petrified Wood Stump with Petunias

Cottonwood Tree

That’s all for this little tour of beautiful, historic Medora. My next post will continue on through Theodore Roosevelt National Park, just north of town.

Here are some of the images I took on Thursday, September 18, of autumn color in the North Dakota Badlands. I have a lot of photos to go through yet, but will take it a batch at a time. Am so glad I went up to Medora that day, as the conditions were nearly perfect. The leaves were a brilliant yellow, the sky a nice clear blue, with an occasional delicate cloud, and there was hardly any wind. It got up to around 90 degrees, which is a little on the warm side, but considering the weather that will be coming, nothing to complain about!

Some of the trees had turned completely yellow, and were a real vivid accent in the landscape of Badlands, sagebrush, and prairie grasses. I adore this country, and couldn’t imagine any scenery that would be more pleasing to me. The way I feel about North Dakota is similar to the way Georgia O’Keeffe felt about New Mexico. She said, “When I got to New Mexico, that was mine. As soon as I saw it, that was my country. I’d never seen anything like it before, but it fitted me exactly. It’s something that’s in the air; it’s different. The sky is different, the wind is different. I shouldn’t say too much about it because other people may be interested, and I don’t want them interested.”

This was a peak day of the entire year; every leaf and blade of grass seemed almost to be singing. There weren’t really any stretches along the way that wouldn’t have been worth exploring and recording in some way.

What a design feast for the eyes: everywhere you looked there were trees in shades of rust, yellow, and chartreuse, magnificently rugged slopes and draws, silvery sagebrush, and olive green junipers. In my mind, there are no finer gardens in the world.

I shot 252 photographs with my new little digital camera, and one with my old film camera. Guess I’ve finally turned the corner into the new world of image-making, after some prolonged foot-dragging.

This is the country I explored back in mid-April for my Sunday Drive blog. I think each time of the year has something different and valuable to offer the visual artist. Though I’ve made this journey many, many times, I always see something different. It may be the color of the grass, the sky or trees, the way the light is shining, or the shadows falling, but there is always something that has not yet been captured.

I’ve heard more than one person from this region say how much the movie “Dances With Wolves” affected them. There on the huge screen, in all its undulating glory, was their homeland of immense, grassy, golden, glistening hills and wide blue skies. I was living in Taos, New Mexico when I saw it, and it really did tug at my heart to see the Dakota prairies portrayed with such beauty and scale. I think it might have been the first time that some people out here realized that they were living in such awesome country.

I remember when I was moving back to Bowman from Taos, looking out at the hills of North Dakota, and realizing just how grassy this country is. It was something that I had not really thought about before, and just took for granted, I guess. The grass is a pale, washed-out color this year, due to the extremely dry conditions on the range. Rain is much needed and wanted out here, along with some good snowfalls.

Some years ago, I was out near these hills with my film camera, on a day of peak color like this year. After getting my slides back, I was really taken with the graceful sloping lines of the background. I didn’t compose the shots very well, and cropped off too much of the top. So this time, I made sure I got enough of the curving elements to make up for the past shoot. It’s not always easy to get out in the Badlands right at the time when the colors and leaves are at their best.

This series of photos stretches from left to right, taking in the whole length of this tree line. My camera has a panoramic stitching feature, which will be fun to try someday. For now, I just tape all the segments together when I want to make a long, horizontal drawing based on my photographic studies.

Here I’ve gone back and shot the tops of the hills, making sure I got some nice sloping lines to work with later.

I love the shape of this cottonwood on the left side of the picture, and have photographed it in other seasons as well.

Out here, we don’t get the wide, dramatic range of colors that they do in places like Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Vermont, but the palette in this scene does venture into the red and orange spectrum.

Here’s the cottonwood moved over into the other side of the picture frame. Sometimes it’s hard to know just where to place things, so I just shoot a variety of compositions, and look them over at my leisure.

While I was shooting these slopes and trees, I spotted a couple of mule deer running through the scene. One stopped and stared back at me for quite a while from behind one of the ridges. As I was watching the deer, a local rancher stopped and invited me to their place just off the East River Road for a visit with his wife and him. So, I proceeded up to the Burning Coal Vein, then pulled off for an enjoyable talk at one of the most beautiful ranch sites in the country. Nice way to spend the middle of a September day.

Two views from the Burning Coal Vein area, one of my all-time favorite spots. While I was driving through here, I noticed a bunch of pink plastic ribbons tied to various objects. I wonder if they indicate the route of the extended Maah Daah Hey Trail.

I love the Rocky Mountain junipers that dot the hills of the North Dakota Badlands. They remind me of the cypress trees in Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings. Boy, I wonder what he would be inspired to create from this magical country!

Well, that’s all I could manage to post of the September Badlands for today. Will try to get more images ready soon; some of buffalo, deer, the town of Medora, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Hope you enjoyed the view as much as I did!

Yesterday was an absolutely splendid day out in the North Dakota Badlands! Went up to retrieve some of my pastel drawings from the Circle C Gallery, and made a day of it. The colors of autumn had really spread over the landscape, there were a few wispy clouds, not much of a breeze, and it was around 90 degrees. It just doesn’t get much better than that, and I have lots and lots of pictures to share with you. Will be processing the digital images and getting them ready to post soon.

Went up to Medora via the East River Road yesterday to take in some programs about Theodore Roosevelt. The countryside looked marvelous, with hints of fall color beginning to appear all over the landscape. No time to dawdle and take pictures, though, so will have to return soon for that. The sky was gray, and it started to rain when we reached Medora, which changed the plans for some of the day’s entertainment. I don’t think anybody could really complain about getting such desperately needed moisture, however, and people were quite flexible about it all.

Clay Jenkinson portrayed Theodore Roosevelt as the newly inaugurated President of the United States, as well as the North Dakota cattleman with ranches near Medora in the 1880′s. Both performances were highly enjoyable and informative. Clay always seems to bring some new dimension to his portrayal of this fascinating, vigorous man. In addition to Clay’s performances, there were cowboy songs, cowboy poetry, and a delicious supper featuring buffalo pit barbeque. Hundreds of people came from all over the state to be part of this celebration of Roosevelt’s life. It’s always good to see that so many people care about the heritage of this beautiful and rugged country.