Prairie Immersion: Two Hikes in Theodore Roosevelt National Park

I've been wanting to visit Theodore Roosevelt National Park for eighteen years, and I'm finally here!

June 20, 2026

This is one of the most amazing scenic drives I’ve ever been on. I’m stopping at every pullout, snapping photos of the ever-changing scenery. The badlands in the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park are huge and colorful, and every twist in the road reveals something new. Look at those tan-and-black stripes! That bluff is slumped sideways! Here’s some hard concretions that look like cannonballs! I pass my first bison!

The badlands in the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park are some of the largest in the park

Best of all, there’s hardly any traffic. I can’t believe it. I’m in a national park on a summer Saturday afternoon, and I can actually enjoy the scenic drive and find an empty parking space whenever I want to stop. I haven’t seen this in a national park for years. Last summer in Olympic National Park, we sat in traffic for two hours just to drive into the Hoh Rainforest. And it’s practically impossible to park at Logan Pass in Glacier these days. Over three million people visited both Olympic and Glacier last year—compared to a mere 729,000 at Theodore Roosevelt.

Most of those visitors don’t make it to the North Unit. It’s not that it’s hard to get to—there’s a nice paved two-lane highway, which construction crews are busily and dustily working on turning into a four-lane highway. But it’s an hour’s drive from I-94, which goes right through the edge of the South Unit. I guess most people don’t want to take the time. But I’m glad I did—and that I’m able to park at the trailhead for the North Unit’s most popular hike, the Caprock Coulee Trail.

The ranger at the small visitor center (housed in a modular building) confirms that Caprock Coulee is the best four-mile trail to hike in the North Unit. “You see a little of everything,” he says. And he’s right. I start out gawking at some up-close views of the gray, tan, and black-striped badlands, then get on top of them in a short but steep ascent. Then I’m in the prairie, and it’s blooming! Prickly pear cacti with lush yellow-orange flowers, pink prairie rose, orange prairie lilies—everything is splashed with color. Fragrant sagebrush, short grasses, sweet-smelling junipers in the canyons.

June is a great month for wildflowers! I wasn't sure what these beautiful lilies were called, so I was just calling them "prairie lilies" until I had a chance to look them up. Turns out that's their real name!

The trail crosses the road, and I assume the last mile will be less interesting, but it turns out to be just as spectacular. Now I’m walking over ridges with stunning views of the Little Missouri River Valley. I check out a rustic stone shelter built by the CCC back in the 1930s. The trail heads right up on top of a rounded clay butte, then descends steeply back to the parking lot. It’s after 6:00 p.m. Mountain Time when I finally get to Cottonwood Campground in the South Unit and set up my tent, but it was totally worth it.

This is the view from my campsite in Cottonwood Campground!

June 21, 2026

It’s overcast and lightly drizzling when I wake up at 5:00 a.m. I don’t normally mind hiking in the rain, but the clay of the North Dakota badlands turns into slippery, sticky “gumbo” when it’s wet. The ground in my campsite is still firm and mostly dry, so I decide to stick to my original plan and hike the Petrified Forest. I’ve literally been dreaming of doing this hike for eighteen years, ever since my family went to the Petrified Forest in Arizona in 2008, and I’m not going to change my plans unless the trail is impassable.

Even though the Petrified Forest is just a few miles as the crow flies from my campsite, it’s an hour's drive to get there to avoid private land. First I quickly drive fourteen miles west on I-94 at eighty miles an hour, then I slowly drive those fourteen miles back on dirt roads at about thirty miles an hour. I’m relieved to see that the national park has clearly marked the route with shiny new signs; I have no difficulty getting to the trailhead. Herds of Black Angus cattle look at me quizzically as I drive through ranches and bump over cattle grates.

The Petrified Forest looks like a fossilized logging site--there are petrified stumps and wood chips literally everywhere

The Petrified Forest is just as amazing as I’d hoped it would be. I start out on the north trail, which dips down into some badlands where there are petrified stumps sticking out of the bluffs literally everywhere. I’ve never seen so much petrified wood in one place except at the Petrified Forest in Arizona. There are piles of petrified wood chips surrounding hundreds (maybe thousands) of petrified stumps. It looks like a fossilized logging site. Petrified wood is perched on mounds of clay, falling out of the sides of cliffs, rolling down into gorges.

From a distance, this just looks like a bleached stump--but it's hard as rock.

But I’m glad I waited all those years to do this hike. Back in 2008, I would have thought the petrified wood was cool but gotten bored by the next five miles of this loop hike, which are through the high prairie on top of the bluffs. Now, I’m just as fascinated by the immensity of the shortgrass prairie. It really is short—most of the plants don’t even make it up to my knees, and I’m only five feet tall.

I see many of the same flowers I saw yesterday. I walk through short native grasses, rub a leaf of fragrant sagebrush, spot blooming yarrow and purple coneflower. The trail goes through a small prairie dog town, and a prairie dog yips at me until I get too close, then dives into its hole. I spy a pronghorn antelope in the distance before it sees me and bounds away over the nearest hill. I see a couple bison bulls. The prairie is never silent; the air is filled with birdsong and the rustling of grasses in the wind.

I found the shortgrass prairie to be just as exciting as the petrified wood. I went off-trail to keep my distance from this bison bull that was grazing right by the trail.

I’m the only person on the prairie. Nobody else started so early in the morning, and I don’t pass another hiker until I’m almost back to the trailhead. Every now and then I stop just to soak it in. There are a few non-native plants—some leafy spurge and sweet clover—but overall the prairie seems quite healthy. It amazes me how well these short and sturdy plants are adapted to survive in this harsh climate, where they can go eight or nine months without rain. There’s so much diversity and life.

Eventually the trail drops back down out of the prairie into the south petrified forest. I sit on a petrified log to eat lunch (since there aren’t any non-petrified ones in the prairie), watch a wild horse walk by, and head back to my car. Just after I drive back into the South Unit’s main entrance, it starts raining much harder. I drive the scenic loop drive in the rain, hike a couple short nature trails, and get my boots covered with mud. I’m glad I got an early start and was done with the Petrified Forest before the rain started.

There was a lot of horse manure on the trail, so I assumed people had been horseback riding--until this wild horse came around a bluff and looked at me

By evening, the rain is over and the sun is setting over the badlands. Little Tent on the Prairie is a bit wet, but it survived the storm, and I end my last day in Theodore Roosevelt National Park happy that I’ve finally had a chance to experience the prairie.