Leaving Glacier National Park, we knew we had a whole day of driving ahead of us and we wanted to get as far East as we could. Looking on our handy dandy National Park Iphone App as well as our trusty atlas, we found that Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota was about the perfect distance away and on our way to Minnesota where we would be heading next. A perfect destination.
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Driving through Montana as we left Glacier was sort of sad. Not only were we heading back east knowing that our trip was almost done, but the mountains that we love were slowly growing smaller with each passing mile. The land goes from mountains to rolling hills to flatish rolling plains. By the time we passed into North Dakota we knew we had left all of the interesting topography behind us.
That is until we finally made it into Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The park is actually part of the Badlands and filled with weird gorges covered in scrub trees and bushes. Kind of like a baby grand canyon, except, not nearly as deep-obviously- and greenish instead of red and brown.
We found our campsite easily and while Nate walked to go pay our site deposit, I started to hear a strange clicking noise. As I peered down the camp road, I noticed two wild horses just walking down the road. They turned at the bathrooms and came straight for our campsite, just grazing as they went. As you can see from the picture, this was just as Nate was getting back. What a weird sight to have wild horses just a few feet from us. We knew they were wild by their lack of horse shoes and mangy hair.
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| Wild Horses grazing right by our campsite!!
With relatively not that much to see in TRNP(coming from Glacier as we did), except scrub trees and ground hogs(and wild horses), we made camp and ate dinner while we waited to head to the ranger program. Unlike some of the other national parks we'd been to where only some people go to the ranger talks, it seemed like the whole camp came out for the program. We listened to the ranger talk about Teddy Roosevelt and his time ranching on this land. Believe it or not, there's lots of interesting stuff that you don't get in your high school history class. Imagine that!
Sunday July 31st- Before we left the park and continued on our way, we stopped at the visitor center and went on a ranger tour of the Theodore Roosevelt's Maltese Cross Cabin. It was the cabin that he had built and lived in during his time as a rancher in the 1880's. |
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| Theodore Roosevelt National Park - Badlands |
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By lunch time, we were on the road again, this time driving all the way to Castaway, a YoungLife camp in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota where I have led as a leader twice. I really wanted to show Nate what YoungLife camp was all about. He had been a leader for 6 years, but unfortunately never made it to camp so it was great for him to finally experience it. We met up with our friend Liz Fay, a former Champaign Younglife leader who was working as a volunteer Work Crew Boss for a month, to watch the evening's activity: the crazy obstacle course! Although we made it to YL camp, we actually had pitched our tent for the night at a nearby campground and slept through our first thunderstorm of the entire trip!
Monday August 1st -
In the morning, we packed up our tent in the rain, enjoyed the hot showers and then headed back to Castaway for the day. We checked in as official Adult Guests. YoungLife has an Adult Guest program, where parents, friends, potential donors, or anyone interested in the way YL camp works can stay in a beautiful house at any of the camps and watch camp happen. If you're there for the whole week you get to see the session progress as kids are introduced to Christ, loved by their leaders, and hopefully accept Christ as their Savior, all while enjoying the little piece of heaven which is camp. In addition to watching the kids, adult guests also get to participate in some of the camp fun, including parasailing, hot tubbing, rock climbing, banana boating and a slew of other camp activities.
I loved showing Nate around camp and we enjoyed banana boating with the other adult guests, most of whom were our parents' ages. We also spent a lot of time catching up with a few of the Champaign leaders who were volunteer workers on Summer Staff for the month. Katie Samuelson and Kelli VanderPal were working in the Sea Breeze, which is the snack shop by the beach, while Connor Feeney was helping rescue kids who didn't know how to sail at the boat launch. It was fun watching them work and seeing how God was changing their lives as well as using them to serve the high schoolers at camp. They even took us to their "house" for a special Summer Staff/Work Crew club and worship time. Both Nate and I were wishing that we had spent a summer serving on Summer Staff enjoying the community and the intimacy of the group.
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| Outside the Adult Guest Lodge |
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| Enjoying Camp! |
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