Roughing it in the Back Country Part II (Really Roughing It)

On Thursday we drove about 60 miles from the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park to the north unit. The lay of the land is much the same, except that in the north unit the buttes are bigger and more rugged, and fewer people go there. Our plan was to hike and camp up in the buttes over night.

I have gone camping lots of times. You drive up to a campground, pick a site and set up camp. Before this year, we always used a tent.  We went tent camping before having children and when I was pregnant (we got an air mattress then). When Kalista was 4 or 5 months old, we camped in 100 degree temperatures AND endured a huge thunderstorm with 7 people in the tent. I have roughed it before. But not like this…

After acquiring a back country permit (who knew you had to do that?), and being instructed to carry plenty of water with us, because as the rangers put it, “We don’t want to have to come rescue you.” (The rangers, by the way, looked at Ken and me as if we were nuts for taking four children including a 4-year old girl up into the rugged landscape to hike and camp.) We loaded our packs with a change of socks and underwear, sleeping bags, food and lots of water. Even Kalista carried her Hello Kitty backpack with her sleeping bag, change of clothes and a water bottle. Ken also shouldered the tent in his pack.

We set off with our packs toward the steep buttes, but first we had to cross that river again, which Kane hates doing. He made Ken promise him that there would be no more river crossing hikes in the future. After baring our feet and wading through the slow, shallow, muddy water we sat on the sandy bank, waiting for our feet to dry before brushing off the river grime and donning our shoes and boots. 

We hiked mainly uphill for a couple of hours through a reedy forest near the river, over plains with sage brush as far as the eye could see (incidentally, I LOVE the eucalyptus/minty smell of sage!), past slumping sheets of stone, petrified tree stumps and rock formations called “cannon ball concretions”. All the while we were gawking in awe at the beauty all around us.

We started looking for a suitable place to set up camp, and found a nice flat grassy patch several yards off the trail to pitch the tent. Once we had our site ready we were hungry and ready to eat dinner. We had packed a few dehydrated meals: chicken & rice and beef stroganoff. Now Karson is our picky eater who generally turns up his nose at anything new or foods that are touching each other. Even he was eager to eat and gobbled up a large portion of chicken & rice, savoring each bite.

After dinner we went exploring. Kolton and Karson climbed a huge rock that stood out over a canyon. They danced and yelled, listening for their echoes in the distance. Of course Kalista wanted to join them, so we all climbed up and stood looking out over the vast rocky valley as the sun set.

We watched the sky change from blue to pinkish purple to indigo, and Kolton got to see his first shooting star. I took Kalista into the tent while Ken and the boys continued to view the heavens. She was sawing logs by the time they joined us and didn’t wake until morning – which is more than the rest of us could say. The wind blew hard, a storm passed overhead, hardly dropping any moisture, but producing plenty of thunder and lightning. Plagued by allergies, poor Kane coughed most of the night, but we all managed to get some sleep.

As the sun rose, Ken and Kane climbed up to the top of the ridge and I did a little yoga in our clearing while the rest of our party slept. After a breakfast of granola bars, beef jerky, nuts and raisins, we broke camp and loaded up our packs. The hike down took a lot less time than the trip up. We made it to the river, took off our shoes (at this point Kane was really crabby), and crossed again.



In the whole time we were out in the back country we didn’t see a single soul or any wildlife. When we signed in at the trail head there was a space for comments. A few lines up from our entry someone had written “We saw a cheetah!” which made us burst out laughing. How in the world could a cheetah make it all the way up here?

Approaching the lot where we had Mambo and Big Baby parked, we had to stop because a herd of bison was grazing right there! Cars were stopped on the road waiting for them to cross, and we cautiously made it to our home on the road and unloaded our packs.

As we exited the park, we stopped for a family picture near the Theodore Roosevelt National Park North Unit sign before driving west toward Montana and Glacier National Park.