Yellowstone Cellars and Winery – Buffalo Gap Guest Ranch – Billings, MT and Medora, ND – July 27 to August 2, 2023

We left Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park on Thursday, July 27th for a leisurely 188 mile drive to Billings, Montana. There, we’d be staying for one night at a Harvest Host location – the Yellowstone Cellars and Winery. It was located in an industrial portion of the city, so no grapevines on rolling hills this time.

The manger on duty told us we could park in the parking lot of the business next to them, but if we had we would have blocked the gate for that business. We decided to park in the street and we’re glad we did as business vehicles were going in and out of that gate for most of the evening. Fortunately the street was a circular drive that was wide enough for three vehicles, so we didn’t worry about being in the way.

We had dinner and some wine in the business. The wine was very good (I wish I had bought a bottle of the Malbec I had), the dinner was so so. We saw several other RVs and travel trailers in the street as well when we came back out. That night there were bad thunderstorms throughout the night, but the morning dawned clear and crisp.

We left there and drove a grueling 285 miles to the Buffalo Gap Guest Ranch outside of Medora, North Dakota and the South Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. A good portion of Interstate 94 was closed for construction along the way, so we often found ourselves either stopping for crews or driving in the westbound lanes that had been re-purposed for those heading east. It was a longer day on the road than I like to spend, made longer by the stops and slowdowns.

Buffalo Gap Guest Ranch bills itself as a “working ranch” and is about 2 miles off the Interstate. Almost all of that 2 miles is gravel and rutted. There was a section that was like trying to drive over a giant washboard. When you pull in it is set up like you are coming into a town of the old west. Wooden buildings line each side of the main road and are fashioned like those of westerns we used to watch on black and white TVs. Most of them are motel rooms, but one is the office/restaurant and one is a small laundry room.

In my opinion, “working ranch” is an excuse to pretty much have a junk yard. We were told we could fill our fresh water tank, but the only potable water line was blocked by a boat on a trailer and the hose was running across to a horse in a metal stall. We had to take the hose, clean it with Clorox wipes, and it just barely reached around the boat/trailer to the intake on Nomad.

Then as we followed the road to our site it too was rutted and cut deep where water had forged rough paths through the dirt and rock. Along the way there were various kinds of farm equipment in disrepair lining the right side of the road and the left where the barn was located that we had to thread our way through.

The sites were gravel and scrub grass, unlevel and backed into each other. We were fortunate that no one was assigned the spot behind us for the 5 nights we were there because I had to back a little over into that spot in order for my electrical cord to reach without dragging out the extension. The scrub grass was full, and I mean FULL, of little grasshoppers. They would fly up into the air and onto your legs, arms and face each time you took a step. I don’t understand why the local bird population was 1) not huge in number and 2) not all overweight from all the available grasshopper meat.

After we got unloaded I decided I needed to clean out the inside of the truck. We had some things we had just thrown into the back floorboard that I needed to put away and there was a lot of sand in the front floorboards on our WeatherTech mats. While doing so I discovered the evidence that we might have a field mouse in the truck. A couple of napkins in the glove compartment had their edges chewed on and there was some mouse poop on the back seat cover.

After cleaning everything up and, naturally, not finding the critter (I thought there was only one due to the minimal evidence) I had to go inside and break the bad news to Cindy. If that thing had run across her feet while we were rolling down the Interstate she would have jumped out the door no matter how fast we were going,so I was thankful that hadn’t happened. But, we had plans the next day to drive about 40 miles away to Dickinson to shop and do laundry. There was no way she would ride in Voyager knowing there was a mouse in there unless it was an absolute last resort.

So I went by myself the next day and added mouse traps and glue traps to our shopping list, lol.

That night I put one trap baited with peanut butter on the front passenger floor mat and one glue trap on the back seat cover. The next morning, thankfully, the little bugger was stuck in the glue trap. That night I did the same again just in case there were any others in there, but those were empty the following morning. I also spayed the glove compartments interiors with “Grandpa Gus’s Mouse Rodent Repellent”, so the inside of Voyager smelled of cinnamon and peppermint for several days. I’m pretty sure we had picked up the little hitchhiker at Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park since our site was surrounded by grassy fields. But I’m hopeful the spray will encourage any others NOT to climb into the truck.

We took one morning to drive through the loop at the South Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I had been there years ago when I was deployed to North Dakota and I was pretty sure Cindy would enjoy it since it’s a lot like Custer State Park. We saw some beautiful rock formations, buffalo, prairie dogs and wild horses. Cindy finally found a stuffed prairie dog to join her other stuffed animals.

Sadly, one large section of the loop was closed for construction so we could not do the entire loop but had to turn around and go back the way we came. However that gave us the chance to see things from the opposite perspective and enjoy a different way of looking at the natural wonders of the park.

That night the area had a very bad thunderstorm. The wind was vicious and the rain was torrential. I was worried we might have a flash flood because so much rain was falling on the hard, cracked ground. But, by the next morning, all the rain had soaked into the parched earth and it was back to being just as hard and dry as it was before the storm.

This spot was economical, but I doubt we’ll ever go back there. More minuses than pluses on this one.

Next up: A little slice of heaven at exit 307!

Thanks for following The Wandering Wetheringtons.

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