I’m sort of ready to be done writing about this trip, and I’m not sure how much I really have to say about the homeward-bound road trip in any case. But, I’m an obsessive completist…so here goes:
For a variety of reasons (too tired the night before to do any advance packing; knew I needed a good night’s sleep to recover from the exhausting day; no need to be in any big hurry today, anyway; etc.), I decided against getting up and hitting the road early for the first leg of the homeward trip. Instead, I slept in, then took my sweet time packing up this morning (not least because I was still so stiff and sore that I could barely walk). It had rained during the night, naturally, so I was packing up wet gear, too. It was 10:15 by the time I was ready to get under way…and then, abruptly, I realized that I had neglected to take any pictures of my campsite the whole time that I’d been there! So I snapped a few before hitting the road, even though the site was now empty.
Then, during my drive from Canyon up to the northeast entrance, I ended up stopping at the Tower general store because I was suddenly seized with the desire to browse for a souvenir. Yeah, I was in a huge hurry today, huh? I ended up going with a super-nifty key ring doodad, which is awesome, because I’d been meaning to acquire something interesting to adorn my key ring for ages but never getting around to it.
With this final bit of business accomplished, I settled in to road trippin’ mode: out of the park, over Bear Tooth Pass, and onward through Montana and back into North Dakota. If truth be told, I wasn’t in a fantastic mood, at least for the latter half or so of the driving day. I don’t know if I was just tired, or sad that the trip was over, or if it was the packing up of wet gear, or what, but my enthusiasm for the return trip was low. Also, although I think I kind of pushed it from my mind until afternoon, I had cause to fear that my CPAP battery was not going to get me through a final night of camping; the converter had emitted a beeping sound just before I got up this morning that usually signals that the battery is nearly out of juice. The guy at the station must, indeed, have been “rounding up” when he estimated that it was up to three-quarters of a full charge. And so, when I sort of remembered this problem later in the day (and layered it on top of my already uncharacteristically low enthusiasm for a final night of camping), I starting having thoughts about finding a hotel room for the night instead of camping at Theodore Roosevelt—and this is what I ended up doing. I checked around town in Medora, but there wasn’t much available, so I drove the additional 30 miles or so to Dickinson and checked myself into a hotel for the final night of the trip (feeling just a bit defeated, if also relieved at not having to set up wet gear—and secure in the knowledge that I would have C-PAP power). I ordered a pizza for dinner, and was momentarily pleased to learn that the hotel’s pool was open all night long, only to be disappointed when, after my dinner, I went to the pool room and discovered that there was no hot tub (!?). Oh, well.
There’s even less to day about the final day. I again got a relatively leisurely start (though not as late as on the previous day), and then it was just a day of driving across ND and MN (stopping for lunch somewhere, I suppose, though I’ve already forgotten the specifics) until I reached the Twin Cities and made my way home. Weirdly, at the tail end, I was seized with this awful premonition that I was going to get home and find that something was terribly wrong with my beloved torts (like somebody being dead, or something). I knew that this made no sense; after all, even in the unlikely event that something HAD gone wrong, the friends who were stopping by to feed them while I was away would surely have emailed me and let me know, right? And of course, this strange anxiety did prove entirely unfounded; the adorable little critters were perfectly normal (and quite eager to be fed) when I got home to them.
I had left the buffalo behind (except for the one on my king ring, of course), but the critters with whom I share a home are even more amazingly nifty and awesome—so I guess it’s all right. 🙂
The End