Beautiful Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada – [August 26 – 27, 2023]

 

 

Overlooking Upper Waterton Lake - wildfire smoke puts the mountains in silhouette

Mountains rise abruptly out of the prairie

Oh we love Waterton Lakes National Park!  What’s not to love?  Dramatic Rocky Mountains sculpted by glaciers; clear, cold lakes (some big and some tiny); scenic hikes; canoeing and kayaking; beautiful vistas; dog friendly trails and lakes; generous, welcoming people.  The mountains of Waterton Lakes rise abruptly out of the gently rolling Alberta prairies.  There are no foothills.  We camped in Crooked Creek Campground 3 miles from the park, in the prairie.  Across the street from our campsite are fields of cattle and horses.

 

Upper Waterton Lake from the boat tour

Waterton is the Canadian part of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.  This was the first International Peace Park.  It was originally sponsored by Rotarians on both sides of the border with the slogan, “Nature Knows No Boundaries.”  Pretty cool!  This small park (525 sq km) is also a Unesco World Heritage site, and Unesco Biosphere Reserve.

 

Goat Haunt entrance to Glacier National Park

The boundary between the US and Canada

Glaciers shaped the mountains into steep walls along the sides of deep, blue lakes.  The largest lake is Upper Waterton Lake.  It extends into the Glacier US National Park.  On our first day, we took the International Boat Tour down the lake, where we disembarked for a brief while at the Goat Haunt entrance to Glacier Park.  You can only get to this entrance from the lake or by hiking 8 miles along Upper Waterton Lake.  While on the boat, we passed the international boundary between the two countries – a line of cleared forest.

 

A forest regenerates after fire of 2017.

Burned tree trunks from 2017 fire.

Cameron Lake - The fire destroyed the trees on the upper part of the mountain, but spared the trees near the lakeshore

In 2017, Waterton had a catastrophic wildfire sweep through much of the park.  As we have learned at other parks, fire is an important part of forest regeneration.  The burned tree trunks now stand among rampant new growth and wildflowers.  As you look around at the sides of the mountains, some show rock formations usually hidden by forest, with skeletal trees, while other sides are lush with green forests untouched by fire. 

 

Big Horn Sheep walking down the road.

Historic Prince of Wales Hotel overlooks Upper Waterton Lake

Our first morning in Waterton we drove into the Waterton Townsite (location of stores, hotels, restaurants and private residences) in the company of 3 Big Horn Sheep.  They were the extent of the wildlife we saw.  There was a car between us and the sheep, so most of my photos are of their hind quarters…

 

Red Rock Canyon

After our boat tour that first morning, we drove to Red Rock Canyon, a canyon of deep red argillite, with a babbling stream bouncing through the canyon.  We visited on a Saturday, and the canyon and stream were full of families laughing and walking in the cooling waters of the stream deep inside the canyon.  Most of these families were from nearby towns who drove 1-3 hours to enjoy the park on a hot summer day.  The canyon is very pretty.  There is a paved loop path along both sides of the canyon.  Very scenic.

 

Schooner joined us on a hike and made many new friends.

Waterton is dog friendly, so we took Schooner with us on our second day in the park.  We started the morning with a 2-mile hike high above but along the Upper Waterton lakeshore.  The views were breathtaking.  We saw up close the regeneration of the forest after the fire.  We met probably 20 other dogs on the trail (all but 2 friendly) and probably about 100 people who wanted to pet Schooner.  Needless to say, Schooner was in heaven.

 

Cameron Lake - the icefield above it was once a glacier, but it has melted away 

After the hike we drove to Cameron Lake.  This impossibly beautiful little lake has crystal blue water and is 193 feet deep at its deepest part.  Visitors can bring their own canoes, kayaks, SUPs, and floaty toys to the lake.  Again, we found many of the people we met were from nearby and visiting the park for the day.  There is a hiking trail around the lake and families set up around the shoreline, some even cooking their meals. 

 

Schooner's very first canoe ride

Brrrr - Russ goes swimming

We rented a canoe and took Schooner out on her very first canoe ride.  She did super well and was very calm throughout.  It was lovely to be bobbing around on the water again.  After the canoe ride, Russ took a swim in the lake.  Cold but not impossible.

 

Look at the strata on this mountain!  

Unlike its wildly popular cousin to the South (Glacier), Waterton has modest visitation.  If you can’t get an entry ticket into Glacier, or don’t even want to try, we recommend Waterton Lakes as an alternative.

The moon at sunset from our campsite

Call it Bear Lodge or Devils Tower - Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming [August 21, 2023]

 

The oral traditions of the Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa and Lakota people have similar stories of how the huge monolith known as Devils Tower National Monument was formed.  In the stories, the Tower grew tall to help people escape a bear.  The ridges along the side were made by the bears' giant claws as it tried to climb the tower.  They call it the Bear Lodge or Den.  Col. Richard Dodge named it Devils Tower in 1875 as he led an expedition looking for gold in the Wyoming Black Hills.

 

Through a dirty window - but still

The Tower is a landmark that you can see from a long distance away, rising up out of the prairie.  It was an important landmark for 20 native tribes, as well as white explorers and settlers.  As you drive into the area, it rises majestically in the distance.  It is easy to see how it could be seen as a sacred site.

 

Rock columns

Note how the area around the top is more worn looking

Scientists believe that the Tower was formed about 50 million years ago when hot magma was forced up through sedimentary rock.   As it cooled, it cracked into long multi-sided columns.  The Tower is actually a giant bundle of these columns; the longest and largest natural rock columns in the world.  So, the ridges you see are actually the sides of the individual columns.  Over the years, from forces of weather and the nearby Belle Fourche River, the sedimentary rock eroded.  It is thought that the area around the summit which looks more worn than the rest of the tower was exposed when the glaciers moved through here, beating the stone up a bit more.

 

Impressive and beautiful

The Tower is 867 feet tall.  It’s summit measures 180 x 300 feet.  It was the first National Monument created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.  It was a significant location in the 1977 movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. 

There is a boulder debris field around part of the base

 

There is limited parking at the Monument, so they have posted signs warning of a one hour wait for a parking space during prime visitation times.  We visited late in the afternoon on a 99 degree day, so there were plenty of parking spaces.  A paved path takes you up to the Tower, and around the base.

 

Camping in the shadow of the Tower

We are camped across the street from the entrance to the Tower in the Devils Tower KOA.  Tonight we will watch the Close Encounters movie in an outdoor venue with the Tower as a backdrop. 

Theodore Roosevelt Among the North Dakota Badlands – Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Medora ND [August 17-18, 2023]

 

The North Dakota badlands

When Theodore Roosevelt was a young man, he traveled to Medora, North Dakota to hunt bison in the badlands along the Little Missouri River.  About a year later, his wife died in childbirth and his mother succumbed to typhoid on the same day in the same house.  Roosevelt returned to Medora to grieve and heal.  The North Dakota badlands ended up changing his life.  He fell in love with the area, and purchased two ranches where he and his ranch hands raised cattle.  He gloried in what he called the “strenuous life.” 

 

The Little Missouri River below carved this magnificence

The tenuous ecological balance that he came to understand in this harsh landscape, so different from his home in New York, informed his conservation efforts during his Presidency.  He has been called the Conservation President, creating the US Forest Service, 5 national parks, 18 national monuments and 150 national forests - a total of over 230 million acres of protected land. 

 

A young bison

He is quoted as having said, “I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota.” (1918)  Theodore Roosevelt National Park was founded to honor him and preserve these unusual geological formations in 1947.

 

Our campground was beside the Little Missouri River and great scenery

The North Dakota badlands were formed by the Little Missouri River, relentlessly flowing, meandering and eroding the soft strata of sand, earth and rock that had accumulated over the centuries.  Wind, rain and snow also contribute to the erosion.  The striped cliffs and formations that were exposed are breathtaking.

 

Look at that strata!

Theodore Roosevelt National Park has 3 units.  We visited the South and North units.  The location of Roosevelts Elkhorn Ranch house composes the third unit, and can only be reached by 4-wheel drive vehicles.

 

The South Unit

 

The South Unit is located next to the town of Medora.  Probably because there is a place to stay nearby in the town (more about that later), it is the most heavily visited of the two units.  There is a Visitors Center with a 13-minute movie, nice historical displays, and a gift shop.  From there you can drive along a 36-mile loop road, stopping at overlooks and trailheads.  About a 1/3 of the road was closed for maintenance, so we drove what we could and returned back the same way.

 

Dana along the Boicourt Trail

We hiked out on the overlook to Wind Canyon stopping every few feet to photograph the amazing view.  A later hike along Boicourt Trail ends atop a narrow promontory above the cliffs.  So stunning and a little scary.

 

We saw many prairie dogs in “towns”, vast empty fields with piles of dirt marking the entrances to their tunnels.  The prairie dogs are busy eating vegetation, visiting each other, and watching out for dangerous things.  One prairie dog town was taken over by a herd of bison, grazing, lying down, and rolling in the dust.  The prairie dogs had gone into their tunnels waiting for their shaggy, enormous visitors to leave.

 

The North Unit

Schooner came with us to the North Unit

The North Unit is about an hour away by car from the South Unit and Medora.  There are no towns nearby.  It is less visited but no less dramatic.  Much of this unit is preserved as wilderness area.  On the day we visited the North Unit, temperatures were forecast to be above 100 degrees.  We decided not even to attempt a hike, wore shorts and sandals, and brought Schooner (dogs aren't allowed on the trails) along for the drive through the park.  It has a 14-mile one-way road that you follow and then return the same way.  It has some spectacular vistas of the Little Missouri River.

 

Bentonitic clay

Distinctive blue-grey coloring

The colors in the North Unit are a bit different, with the addition of bentonitic clay – a blue-grey substance that flows when wet, and dries as hard as stone.  The orangish color in both parks is Clinker, stone that has been “cured” and taken on iron by heat from a fire in an adjacent coal strata (the black stripes).

 

Cannonball Concretions - more are hidden inside the cliff and will be exposed by erosion

The North Unit also has these unusual Cannonball Concretions – spherical shapes formed by mineral rich water leaving minerals behind as it flows through the strata.  The minerals act like glue, binding the sediments together.  The concretions come in many shapes, when it is spherical it is called a Cannonball Concretion.

 

Medora, North Dakota

 

The written history of Medora starts with the Lakota people being relocated off this land by the US government and onto reservations to make way for the railroad.  The railroad helped Madora become a cattle boom town.  The town itself was founded by the Marquis de Mores (who named it after his wife).  He built a meat packing plant with the idea of shipping beef back East in refrigerated train cars.  A particularly harsh winter that killed a lot of the livestock ended Medora’s history as a cattle town.

 

Medora Musical - children in the audience are invited onstage for one number

The town of Medora shrank away.  In the early 1960s, a Bismark philanthropist, Harold Schafer, began investing in the town.  He built a hotel and reconstructed the Joe Ferris General Store.  When the park decided to stop their outdoor drama about Roosevelt, he bought the outdoor amphitheater and created a musical extravaganza featuring the Old West, Teddy Roosevelt, and patriotism, that shows nightly as the Medora Musical.  You can also have a fun-filled dinner at the Pitchfork Fondue, where steaks are cooked on pitchforks in oil.  We enjoyed the Musical with the glorious badlands as a backdrop.  We didn’t try the fondue.

 

Schafer created and donated all his holdings to the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation.  In addition to the Musical and the Fondue, they run hotels, restaurants, a campground (where we camped), a golf course, ice cream parlors and other attractions in town.  The town population of 100 people swells in the summer with hundreds of seasonal workers, brought in by the Foundation who are provided food and lodging in Foundation owned facilities.  They are building the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora and the Foundation is making plans to make the town a year-round destination.

If you've been following us for a while, you might remember that we visited other badlands in Badlands National Park in South Dakota in 2016.  Here is our post from that visit.

A Bit of Family and Ohio History – Treber Inn, Adams County, Ohio [August 10, 2023]

 

Treber Inn

When the United States was brand new, the area we now know as Ohio was considered to be part of the Northwest Territory.  To facilitate travel and encourage settlement, Congress commissioned Col. Ebeneezer Zane in 1796 to build a road between Wheeling WV and Limestone (now Maysville) KY. Initially no more than a tomahawk blazed trail, over the years Zane’s Trace was widened and eventually paved to become Ohio State Highway 41 today.

 

Travel by foot or horseback along the narrow trail was slow on the early Trace, and inns sprang up about every 6 miles.  One was built in 1797 and operated as “Travelers Rest” by Russ’ Great-great-great-grandfather, John Treber. The hewn log building still stands beside Route 41 today.

 

Not much is known about John Treber's early years.  The Trebers were of Dutch ancestry and came to the colonies in the early 18th century.  John Treber is said to have fought in the American Revolutionary War.  He first appears in official records for his son Jacob’s birth in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1779.  He, his wife Mary Campbell, Russ' Great-great-great-grandmother and their children floated on barges down the Ohio River to Limestone KY, where Mary died in 1795.  John traveled overland to settle in Adams County where he married Mary Ann Earl in 1797.  They built and operated the Treber Inn. Mary Anne died in 1818. 

Eventually, John and his third wife Catherine Williams retired from innkeeping/farming and “swapped farms” with his second son, Jacob (Russ’ Great-great-grandfather) and Jacob’s first wife Jane Thoroman.  Apparently, Jane’s delicious biscuits were a draw for travelers.  Together they had thirteen children. 

 

Politicians gave speeches from this porch

Politicians often stayed at the Inn on their way East, meeting with local voters and giving speeches from the front porch.  Henry Clay (who is said to have coined the phrase “Self Made Man”) was one of these.  Andrew Jackson and his entourage stayed at the inn while traveling to his inauguration in 1828.

When Jane passed, Jacob married Mary Ann Freeland, and they had six more children, including Russ’ Great-grandfather Lafayette Traber.  

The first time that Jacob voted for president, he voted for Thomas Jefferson.  He subsequently named one of his sons (by Jane) Thomas Jefferson Treber, and he named another son (by Mary Ann) after Jefferson's friend the Marquis de Lafayette.  His son Lafayette changed the spelling of his last name to Traber with an "a", the spelling that Russ’ branch of the family uses.  We hope to meet up with Lafayette again at the end of our trip when we pass through Kansas City, MO.

 

The Treber Inn is one of the oldest structures in Ohio today.  It is privately owned and not open to the public.  There is a monument erected near it by the Adams County Historical Society with information about it and Zane’s Trace.

 

The entrance to the Treber Cemetery

The Treber Cemetery is located behind the Inn.  It is marked by stone walls on either side of its drive.  It is not only the resting place of the early Trebers, but there are recent Trebers buried there as well.  Some of the older gravestones are missing, and there are more recent stone markers erected to commemorate those individuals, along with cedar trees planted to mark their graves.  From Jacob’s actual gravestone, we learned that he lived to be 97 years old, which is quite impressive for that time.  He fought in the War of 1812.  On a sad note, the cemetery also contains the graves of infants who did not survive.  One marked the baby as having survived only 24 days. 

 

Treber Cemetery

The stream that passes by the house is called Treber Run on the map.

Jacob Treber b. 1779 - d. 1875