With temperatures dropping to 40 degrees below zero, the Lewis and Clark expedition relied on buffalo robes to stay warm.
Seventy years after Lewis and Clark sailed by the abandoned village, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry arrived and built a fort to protect the Northern Pacific Railroad as it pushed across the plains. Today you can visit Mr. and Mrs. Custer's Victorian house, the barracks and a number of other fort buildings which have been reconstructed in recent years.
The April 14, 1805, entry in Lewis' diary piqued our interest. He wrote that he "ascended to the high country about nine miles distant from the Missouri" and that "the upland is extremely broken, consisting of high bare knobs as far as the eye can reach." It sounded to us like Lewis had encountered the badlands of the Little Missouri River. Intrigued, we turned west and soon were looking at "burnt hills of lava and pumice," as Lewis had described them. Best of all, we had entered the Little Missouri National Grassland, where we knew there were hundreds of miles of dirt roads and rougher "high clearance" 4x4 trails.
The Little Missouri National Grassland encompasses over half a million acres of rugged, unspoiled Badlands topography. The grassland is also home to North Dakota's only bighorn sheep as well as thousands of elk, antelope, whitetail and mule deer, eagles, falcons, and prairie dogs. We spread open the Grassland map on the Discovery's hood and looked for a trail that would take us into the grassland and among the hilltops. We chose one that climbed high above the Little Missouri River and followed the crest of the hills for 20 or 25 miles.
Once saturated, the bentonite clogged our tires, our boots, even our dogs' paws!
As soon as we turned off the gravel road and onto the two tracks that were the trail, our tires sank in the mud. The Dunlop Mud Rovers found a solid bottom about 6 inches below the watery top and with the center differential locked, we followed the trail across green grassy pastures. Wherever the cattle had congregated, the trail had been trampled into a "buffalo wallow" or large mudhole. With a bit of momentum, and with the ARBs locked, we churned our way across them. The sunny morning gave way to an overcast sky, which made the landscape even more impressive. When a light drizzle turned to rain, we shrugged our shoulders and resigned ourselves to setting up a damp camp. When the trail began to descend, we thought it would be nice to set up camp in the shelter of the trees and not on the windswept ridge. And that's when we found ourselves sliding down the trail sideways!
Somehow we needed to get the front tires to bite and pull the truck back in line. Simultaneously, I stabbed the brake pedal hard with my left foot (thus throwing the vehicle's weight to the front tires) pushed down on the gas pedal with my right foot and began sawing the steering wheel. It worked; the Dunlops' shoulder lugs gained traction and turned us down the fall line. I happily steered right into the ruts, eased off the throttle, and engine-braked down to the saddle.
Through the mist and rain we could see the Little Missouri River far below us.
After a sigh or two of relief, we looked around. Our saddle dropped steeply to the south, rose gently to the north for a couple hundred feet and then dropped cliff-like towards the river, some 400 feet below us. Ahead of us, the trail climbed steeply back to the ridge. Having no illusions that we could drive out of the saddle, we decided that when the rain stopped we would set up camp. We made ourselves comfortable in the Discovery seats and talked about the day's events. Still it rained. At times like this, there's nothing like a good book, and we just happened to be traveling with the annotated journals of Lewis and Clark. We began to read. We were reading a particularly gripping account of a near-fatal mishap when we felt the truck move. I opened the door and looked at the trail. The ruts had become raging torrents, and our tires were being undermined by the flowing water. We were about to get stuck standing still! Out came the rain jackets and we surveyed the situation. While we were reading, the tires had sunk enough to high-center the truck! Time to move. Driving out of our predicament would probably not work, and if it did we would do quite a bit of damage to the trail. Times like these are made for winching. We ran the winch cable at a 45-degree angle and secured it to our trusty Pull Pal. Our Ramsey winch easily pulled the Discovery off the trail. Since we were already wet, and it was still raining as hard as ever, we decided to set up camp.