On our way to Montana we stopped at Fort Union, one of the International Trading Posts established by Astor across the country.  He made $ millions and the Native Americans received cloth from England which they valued because Bison fur was too hot in the summer.  Beads came from Venice, other goods as far away as Russia and China.  The Russians liked the Bison fur.  Audubon created many of his paintings in his 4th book here. This Fort only gets about 100 visitors a day.  We got to touch all the type of furs traded including badger and otter (very soft).

Funny time exchange here.  The parking lot runs along the Missouri River (one of the reasons for the trading post) and the Missouri separated Mountain Time from Central Time and you can stand on one side of a sign and be in Montana and North Dakota on the other. The time on the cell phone flips back and forth.

Paddy calls this rock formation the Apostles.  All the next photos come from our visit at Theodore Roosevelt. Below see FDR Conservation Core's Work amidst the yellow sweet clover (an invasive species in the native grasses) Then the next photo see the Little Missouri River wander through the Badlands.  Now for the funniest story of the week.  We are riding our tandem to Caprock Coullee to hike to the Prairie Dog town. (Pat will send photos of those along later). We come on area called the Long X trail where cowboys herded cattle and there sat four huge bison. There heads are almost as big as me (1500-2000 pounds) and they did not like us.  The ranger said they ignore cars and RVs but for some reason bikes seem to disturb them. We peddled like no tomorrow. Along the way back  to the campground from the hike we get on our tandem and see a herd of bison.  He got a great photo of the herd of bison with calves, a far away photo...and then whoops, a big bull is racing beside us and we go off the road and almost buy it right there.  We get away from that encounter and there is another one just sitting at the roads edge looking straight at us like he/she might charge us next. So the photo at the end of this was safely taken from the Proud Mary (she is much bigger than any old bison.)   ONE LAST NOTE!  PLEASE FOLKS COMMENT. WE NEED TO HEAR FROM YOU! JUST CLICK ON "NO COMMENT" and a place should come up for you to write something! Tell us what is going on in your lives.
Pat is starting to use the camera so many photos will be better once he figures how to load it on the computer and send on the blog.  We are learning so many new skills.
But one skill I never will have... I don't check my spelling or edit my grammar (dyslexic, you know).  Don't have time because we are never at a 4G place long enough, so forgive me.  I did note on one read back that I failed to say for every oil well it is estimated that 10,000 jobs are made.  That doesn't seem like an exaggeration when you see what we have seen on the road. I get the idea from many local people that they think about it the same way the Park Rangers think about the invasive clover species. One person described it as the "gold rush" of 2014.  We wonder what will happen to all the metal homes, rigs, etc.. once everyone leaves, metal ghost towns, disrupted wildlife and human lives?? We found out one other sad piece of information: 80% of the water they use for the fracking stays in the ground to find its way back to the surface through the cracks and broken pipes; the other 20% goes to their "salt water" disposal stations where they inject it 1000 feet down. Pat is finding all kinds of information bad news.

Bison own the road!