| Route 66 | Cities | Beaches |
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Knife River Indian Village |
Fort Benton |
Enchanted Highway |
| The only thing the Northern Sector has in common with the Southern Sector is that the Little Missouri River flows through both of them. Up North the landscape is still wierd, but it's a different kind of wierd. Notice in the photo at right how it's snowing. In June. There are large beach ball looking rocks laying around or suspended in the cliffs. You won't see any wild horses but in their place you'll see Big Horn Sheep. The Northern Sector is not as big and doesn't have a loop trail. Instead, it has a single road that winds across the park to a trailhead, and you drive back out the same road. But the pavement is continually eroding because the landscape is even more unstable than in the South, so the Northern Sector road is under continual repair. |  |
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To get to the Northern Sector, you take I-94 East to Bellefield, then State 85 North past Fairfield and Grassy Butte. It'll take about an hour from Buffalo Gap Ranch. There are no gas stations along the way, so fill up in Medora. Coming into the Northern Sector, you'll pass the Visitor Center on the right and Juniper Campground on the left. Juniper is an outstanding campground, even by the high national park standards. Even fewer folk visit the Northern Sector than visit the Southern, so there are always spaces at Juniper, even in peak season. It's in the cottonwoods near the river, with 50 spacious grassy sites and good rest rooms. There are no motels at all in the immediate vacinity, so you might want to camp up here for a night or two while hiking the trails. |
| There's been a lot more sliding and tilting of large blocks of land in the Northern Sector. You can sit and study a landscape and match up layers from over there with layers from here and figure out what happened. This is an Earth Science teacher's fantasy, and in fact when we visit the North Sector we see a lot of school buses with students on field trips. |  |
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These bizarre "cannonballs" are a common sight up North. They grow to ten feet in diameter inside sandstone cliffs. They're made from quartz and calcium with some iron mixed in. They start when a random impurity catches calcium leaching through the sand. Like a pearl, it then starts to accumulate more and more, in a concentric pattern. Over a thousand years or so it grows quite large, and when erosion exposes it the ball drops out of the cliff to the valley floor below. There are lots of these laying around or hanging on the sides of cliffs in the Northern sector, but the most easily accessible are right across from the entrance to Juniper Campground. Notice the large cannonball resting on the valley floor in the photo top left. |
| The Northern Sector has several really spectacular hiking trails. The longest one is the Achenbach Trail, but unfortunately hiking it entails several river wadings and in May and early June that's not usually possible. By July it is. The same rule holds here that we mentioned in the South : Do Not Try To Hike These Trails In Wet Weather. The base of the trails is a gray-white mud called Gumbo, which is really Bentonite. It turns to quick sand when wet and takes about 24 hours to dry out. This is the Caprock Coulee Trail, a two hour loop on sunny days. It goes past the largest prairie dog village in the North Sector. |  |
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As always, you'll see Buffalo everywhere in the North Sector. If you come to one crossing the road, do not pull up close and honk your horn, or try to work your car through a whole herd crossing. Just sit patiently and take a few photos. The herd up North only contains an average of 150 animals, much less than the South, and they usually graze in groups of 10-15. Look for the Bighorn Sheep mostly near the River Bend and Oxbow overlooks. They stay high on the buttes or on the sides of cliffs. |
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