Camping at Medicine Rocks

After 10 months (the last several spent in withdrawal), we finally went camping again! We spent the past weekend at Medicine Rocks State Park about half an hour south of Baker, Montana. The amazing sandstone sculptures, carved by years of wind and rain and one massive earth-covering flood, are a paradise for eager explorers. The Lakota Indian Charging Bear said it's a place where "the spirits stayed and the medicine men played," ~ thus its name. This is one of those places where a line from the song "The Trees of the Field" comes to mind ~ "the mountains and the hills will break forth before you; there'll be shouts of joy and all the trees of the fields will clap, will clap their hands." Indeed, many of the rocks actually look like they are lifted up in praise.

As a campground, this place rocks (haha - pun intended!), even though it is the kind of setting that gives mothers of boys (and wives of daredevils) high blood pressure. There are so many stunningly beautiful cliffs... that suddenly look like agents of death when you see your young (and adult) family members standing on top of them, precariously close to the edges! There were two caves in particular that we enjoyed, both of which were large enough for all of us to sit inside and savor the cool air. Another highlight was playing hide-and-seek and sardines around a rock "castle" adjacent to our camp site.

A couple years ago I devised a campground rating system, which I'm resurrecting now.

CAMPGROUND RATING SYSTEM
• Bathrooms - maximum of 10 points possible
• Camp Sites (condition of table, fire pits, tent area, privacy) - max of 10 points possible
• Interest (trails, swimming, park, stuff to do) - max of 10 points possible
• Cost - max of 10 points possible
• Overall enjoyability - max of 10 points possible

Here is the score card I'd give Medicine Rocks:
45 points of out a possible 50
• Bathrooms - 8 points (nice outhouses, minimal stink, but spaced so far apart that when someone had to go, we had to call for a bathroom run for everyone cuz we didn't want to have to walk it again in half an hour!)
• Camp Sites - 8 points (nice sites, well spaced, plenty of room even for our 8-man tent; the only issue here was that there was only one water pump to service the whole camp ground, so we had to drive about a mile to the camp enterance to fill up our water buckets)
• Interest - 10 points (a BIG ten points -- this place is awesome!)
• Cost - 10 points (it's free; donations welcome)
• Overall enjoyablility - 9 points (the only thing that could make this spot better would be water. It got pretty hot on Saturday and it would have been nice to have a stream or lake to cool off in, but we did specifically choose to go here, a waterless place, early in the year because it's a lot cooler now that it will be in another monnth or two!)

And now, what you're really looking for here anyway... the pictures.



The boys picked this beautiful bouquet of wildflowers for me. I thought they made a stunning centerpiece for our picnic table.