"Prairie" trip, June '02

The basic goal of the trip was like many of my trips -- to get away from everything for awhile and just be out in "nature" (loosely defined).  To do this, I typically try to stay away from the more popular national parks and related areas.  Since I had heard about the Sandhills region of Nebraska, that was part of my destination.  I also discovered that there was a fairly unknown national park (Theodore Roosevelt NP) in North Dakota, so I decided to make that the long end of a loop.  In all the trip worked quite well -- I managed to avoid crowds fairly well; had lots of time to see remote, scenic locations that are fairly unheard of; and had some interesting chats with local people. 

My basic plan was to first make relatively brief stops at places that I've always wanted to see but weren't really part of the overall goal (places that I could easily get back to on a one week trip some other time): Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, Mesa Verde National Park and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado, with a stop in Denver.  From there the plan was to start the real 'meat' of the trip by heading to Chadron, Nebraska to explore the general Sandhills of Nebraska and nearby parts of the South Dakota Badlands; then on to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.   After that, I was considering trying to go back west to Glacier National Park in Montana and then back home through Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho.  I basically stuck to the plan, except that I enjoyed Nebraska and North Dakota so much that I spent more time there and skipped Glacier (besides, it was stilling snowing in Glacier in June).

A couple of technical notes: I took with me a digital camera that was new to me (a Nikon 995), and thus the pictures are quite different from webpages based on older pictures.  I was quite pleased with the camera and the quality of the pictures, and I hope you like them.  One thing I did not anticipate on this trip, and wish there had been some way to record, was the amount and vocalness of the bird life in the prairie states.  I saw many birds that I had never seen before, and heard fascinating calls that I wish I could have recorded and somehow put on the web site. 

Okay, on to the trip.... ->