What is there to do in North Dakota?!
North Dakota is a state that only 15% of Americans ever make it to. Our main goal with our road trip was to visit South Dakota, but how could we miss an opportunity to visit the state to the North while we were so close. We made the long drive up there during this trip and visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the capital of Bismarck. Check out what we got up to while in North Dakota!
Our whole trip consisted of Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota.
This trip was taken July 2023.
Check out full vlog here:
Medora
Entering North Dakota, we made our way to the small town of Medora. It sits right at the entrance of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. This area was home to President Roosevelt as he worked on a ranch and enjoyed the adventure and freedom that North Dakota offered.
The town of Medora has a few hotels – we stayed at the AmericInn by Wyndham. We booked this months in advance because the hotels in the area would sell out. It was …. mediocre … and expensive. But – on the plus side, was within walking distance of restaurants, shops and ice cream.
We enjoyed a nice dinner at Farmhouse Grill which was delicious and had really fresh food, and got some delicious ice cream at Hatle and Bre Ice Cream. We actually stopped here before we left in the AM for some coffee as well!
We walked around a few of the cute shops, watched the train go by (didn’t have a choice, as it blocked the way back to our hotel) and then crashed for the night.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
We really enjoyed this National Park. I think it’s super underrated! It was not crowded at all, which is great after visiting places like Yellowstone.
We visited Teddy Roosevelt’s original home and then drove the scenic loop while stopping to do 5 short hikes. These hikes led to beautiful overlooks, through prairie dog metropolis and to see wild horses.
It took us about 2 hours in total to do the loop. Our stops included:
- Prairie Dog Metropolis
- Peaceful Valley Ranch
- Wind Canyon 0.5 miles
- Boicourt Overlook Trail 0.8 miles
- Buck Hill Trail 0.4 miles
We had planned to stop at Old East Entrance Trail and Scoria Overlook to complete the loop, but they were closed while we were there.
Bismarck
On the drive out of town, we stopped for a picnic lunch at the Painted Canyon Visitor Center. They had a nice picnic area with great views.
Along the way, we saw a few of the sculptures from the side of the road but didn’t make any stops. There are some really interesting, huge sculptures along the Enchanted Highway – I love a good roadside attraction – but this was nearing the end of our trip and we were tired of driving.
Finally we finished off our adventure by driving to North Dakota’s capitol, Bismarck. We had a quiet evening enjoying the zoo, which was small but really nicely done.
While driving around town, we stopped by the Capitol Building, which was (sorry ND residents), pretty communist ear looking and apparently is one of the ugliest capitol buildings in the country!
We got dinner at CraftCade which had good pizza and arcade games for the kids.
On our final morning, we made a stop at Boneshaker Coffee which was fabulous then went off in search of a gorgeous field of sunflowers. I’d done a lot of research ahead of time and was glad I did. We drove up 83 towards the town of Baldwin (turned right on 201st Ave NE). Drove about 3 min to 66th street and turned left. Then just up the road was a giant field! ND Tourism Sites generally mention where you can see sunflowers at any given time. It was really beautiful.
One final call out was… we had read that Gramma Val made amazing Scotcheroos – a delicious dessert. We visited a few stores that used to have them in stock but couldn’t find. So eventually after a lot of driving around, we found her phone number on her facebook page and texted her!! She replied right away and directed us to this deli that had some in stock. Funny enough, we’ve kept in touch and purchased some of her amazing desserts to be shipped to our house since then!! Fun memories.
We ended our trip by flying out of the Bismarck airport which may be one of the tiniest airports we’ve been to. We planned to eat lunch there, but they didn’t have any food! Funny enough though, they were such a small airport, I could order door dash and meet the driver outside. We ordered some amazing traditional Mexican food and enjoyed it before going through security.
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