Tom Ryan, Author

Tom Ryan, Author

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Tom Ryan, Author
Tom Ryan, Author
Our 90-Minute Traffic Stop in Bison Country

Our 90-Minute Traffic Stop in Bison Country

A story of bison, a state trooper, and a surprise ending

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Tom Ryan
Jul 10, 2023
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Tom Ryan, Author
Tom Ryan, Author
Our 90-Minute Traffic Stop in Bison Country
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Bison grazing this past April in Theodore Roosevelt National Park

The drive from Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) in Medora, North Dakota, to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota is a straight shot. It's 250 miles or 4 hours, depending on how you like to look at it. In terms of road-trip measurements, that's an easy day of driving.

If taken in late spring or early summer, we've done both, the first three hours are a tour through flat and softly rolling green farmland with white billowing prairie clouds floating across the horizon. It is a dreamy scene, made even more idyllic by the lack of traffic. It feels like America before America got crowded.

For us, it always comes at the tail-end of our epic coddiwomples, with the Black Hills typically being our last ‘highlight’ stop.

This leads to meditation and quiet driving, where I digest where we've been and start to catalog our adventures over the previous four months.

But this year we arrived earlier than usual. The snow was gone, but every…

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