Dispatch 14: Buffalo, South Dakota, to Elkhorn Campground, North Dakota

I’m going to be honest with you. Jerod and I have not been completely alone on this trip. We’ve been followed by directors Simon Parmley and Madison Walker Martin and a Texas Tech University student film crew. Our travels up the Great Plains will be a docu-series on Texas Tech PBS next year.

Ronnie Jim Ginsbock thought he’d hit Blossoms and Brew for a quiet breakfast, but his small, local coffee shop had been taken over by our team. When Jerod and I arrived, every member of our film crew had joined a table of locals. We were introduced to Ronnie, a welder and longtime resident of Buffalo, South Dakota. Ronnie had worked as a commercial welder (agricultural, construction and oil field) but also dabbled in metal art. He was curious about our travels and spoke of his love of finding beauty off the beaten path. After chatting with Ronnie, Jerod and I sat down for breakfast. I had over-easy eggs, bacon, hash browns, and a biscuit.

On our way out of town, we stopped at Centennial Park to visit the Three Toes statue, a tribute to one of the last gray wolves to roam this region. From 1912 to 1925, Three Toes slaughtered livestock without discretion and ultimately met his demise in 1925 at the hands of a government trapper named Clyde Briggs.

We finished our South Dakota residency in a sea of yellow grass with a strip of cottonwood trees growing along the Little Missouri River. Jerod and I crossed Boxelder Creek and entered North Dakota. We rode along a pink gravel road that dissected the rugged and layered hills of North Dakota’s Badlands. 

We stopped briefly in the quaint town of Medora, just outside of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and finished the day at the Elkhorn Campground in the Little Missouri National Grasslands, a truly spectacular part of North Dakota. 

Simon was filming as we recapped our day and abruptly stopped shooting. “Guys, the northern lights are going off behind me,” he said. The next several hours were spent with cameras on tripods and necks craned toward the heavens as the lights pulsated in the star studded sky. It was a fitting end to our last night in tents.