GART Day 4 - Running Around in Medora

We started the day with ice cream for breakfast, because we're adults and you can all get bent. Then we snuck off to the Marquis de More's chateau, which I wasn't really wild about seeing, but was actually more interesting than I expected. While we were there, one of the tour guides told us that there is a crazy backwoods trail across dirt roads, private land, and cattle ruts that runs directly out to the petrified forest! So I would be able to go after all, provided that Tamara wouldn't mind spending an hour by herself as I hiked across the scorching prairie to get to it.

After the chateau, we stopped for lunch at Maltese Burgers, a much better meal than last night's buffet. Then we drove off in search of the petrified forest -- which wasn't as hard to find as we expected, but involved a lot of driving over things that weren't really roads.

The road stopped at the end of Teddy Roosevelt Park. We were told that there was a tiny opening in the fence that you crawled through, and that description was completely accurate -- if I were much bigger I wouldn't have been able to get through.

And so began my 1.5 mile hike out to the petrified forest. I had these visions of seeing rattlesnakes and buffalo -- mostly due to the stories told to us by the guide at the chateau, but it was largely uneventful. The trail was very well marked and required lots of climbing, but there was never a chance of getting lost.

The forest itself wasn't what I expected. I imagined, like, a forest, with petrified trees fallen over every which way, but it was completely different: stark, barren, and strangely beautiful in a simple, very minimalist way. The petrified wood was strewn about everywhere, all around, for hundreds of feet, and the ground was a baked white clay you might find on a sea bed. Actually, it looked like this was the remains of an ancient sea whose water had evaporated away.

I spent about 20 minutes taking pictures, then hiked back, where Tamara was patiently waiting. We headed back to town to gas up and get back on our way.

My worst mistake, though, was doing the hike without my shirt. All I wanted to do is get some colour so Heather wouldn't laugh at me this summer. But instead I got sunburned all across my shoulders and upper back. Now Tamara is laughing at me, because she was insisting on sunscreen. I can't win!