North Dakota Dreaming

October 05, 2007

Filed in: North Dakota

This past weekend in Medora, ND, it was a temperate 56 degrees. Perfect for working up a sweat mountain biking or trail riding, right?

That’s what I thought, anyway. Which is why, six weeks previous, I’d emailed my BFF in the whole wide world, N (who, among her many other talents, builds beautiful blogs and then kind of…wanders away from them), and tried to sweet-talk her into leaving her busy life behind and spending a long September weekend with me in North Dakota ("ur fabulous vacation!” the e-mail header read).

To my surprise, she said yes! and, because she is that kind of a girl (i.e., organized, motivated, etc.), we were already looking at flights and wondering if we should meet up in Philly or fly separately to Denver and take a puddle-jumper together from there (which is how, apparently, anyone from out of state gets to Medora), when a little piece of data tripped me up.

I’d been staking out the town for a while, trying to find a fun, cool, wildish place in ND that would really give me a good feel for the state, but it wasn’t till I was reading the issue of National Geographic Adventure that listed “50 Top Adventure Towns (One in Every State)” that I came across this fun fact: the population of Medora, ND, is 100. 

Oooo, typo! I thought. I’ve lived and worked in enough seasonal tourist traps to know 100 people isn’t enough to serve the needy, greedy visitors from elsewhere. Even by North Dakota standards, that’s simply not enough human beings to man Ye Olde Western Shoppe, serve up the BBQ Meat d’Jour at the local Authentic Kitchen, park shuttle n’ fly people to and from the regional airstrip, and sing and dance in the local extravaganza (of which Medora apparently has a huge one).

So—and this is very unlike me—I actually did a little advance sleuthing. First I talked to the gung-ho woman at the local cyclery, who said, hey, sure, we’re open in September, and yes, you’re right, it’s not at all hot then (I’d been scared of the heat after reading an article in the New York Times that made riding in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park sound like hell, only with more rocks). 

Okay, one down. It took my second conversation, with what can only be described as an authentic cowboy personage, to set me straight. The polite older gentleman who answered the phone at the trail-riding place, who said yes’m and no’m enough times to make me feel precisely 102 years old, explained that they don’t give trail rides in September because there’s nobody to give trail rides to.

Absolutely everybody clears out of Medora on Labor Day weekend, I was told (except, I guess, for the bicycle lady and maybe her 99 closest friends?).

“But why do you have September hours on the web site?” I persisted, foolish in my disappointment.

“Because Labor Day’s in September, ma’am,” said he in his best give-me-a-minute-hon-I’m-talking-to-a-dang-fool-Eastern-lady.

Right. I knew that.

So yeah, no gigantoid BBQ steam table, no puddle-jumpers, no head-banging mountain biking, no singin’ and dancin’ Medora Musical for me, leastways not till Memorial Day.

Kind of gives you something to look forward to all winter, doesn’t it?