North Dakota…..I mean absolutely no offense to anyone here, but if you’ve traveled through North Dakota, you know a lot of it isn’t terribly exciting. Any state is like this to some extent right? Especially considering that if you’re traveling through, you’re on a highway and not seeing the state’s best features. All of the sudden-BAM, North Dakota will surprise you.

We recently traveled from Minnesota to Montana (Billings) to pick up a camper. This meant the shortest drive was through North Dakota on Hwy 94. We didn’t have enough time to stop at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and we were bringing Sage on this trip (dogs aren’t allowed in many areas of many national parks) but we did a quick search about the state High Point.

We have a few other trip reports of High Points, if you aren’t familiar…. “High Pointing” is just the activity of going to the highest point in all 50 states. Sometimes that is a mountain you must climb as it is with Washington and Mount Rainier….sometimes it is just simply the area with the highest elevation in the middle of a field/pasture as it is in Nebraska.

White Butte, the highest point in ND, is only about a 45 min detour off of HWY 94 and takes less than 2 hours to complete according to All Trails. At 3,506 ft it ranks 30/50 in height not even close to the 7,000+ in South Dakota. And even though White Butte is in the western part of the state-as is Theodore Roosevelt Nat’l Park, they aren’t that close together (I was thinking the high point would be in the park…nope).

Here’s what we can tell you.

Approach from the North. The closest town is Amidon, ND if you are looking at forecasts, and White Butte is just to the south of town off of County Road (?) 85. If you are following the directions from All Trails it makes zero sense coming from the south. Even if you are coming from the South, past the town of Bowman, ND stay on 85 until it makes a jog and runs east/west. That way you’ll actually see signs that say “White Butte, ND State High Point-this way”.

Online warns about mud-more on that later-and rattle snakes, so I was a little nervous to be with Sage (though dogs are allowed) and wanted to make sure we still had enough daylight to be able to see them. My little understanding of snakes tells me they hunker down for the night-and I did a little refresher about venomous snakes before we left!

The mud is interesting. It’s a clay like mud that’s white-something we were pretty unfamiliar with. Parts of the trail LOOK like solid ground-when in actuality it’s mud that will give way as soon as you step on it. If you’re like us, one person will hit it, warn the second, and then the second person will take a different and confident approach and fall on their ass……and arms, hands…..GoPro etc. But I can’t speak from experience (of course we can).

It only took us about 20 mins to hike to the summit, we spent plenty of time enjoying the views from the top-took a moment to imagine life many a years ago on the plains, raising cattle or traveling through in a wagon train. You get a 360 degree view and beyond a few fences and fields -there hasn’t been much development. The wind took us back 100 years and suddenly we were transported-it was beautiful.

20 mins down and this was a very easy high point, but not to be missed.

The town of Amidon is pretty sparse. That area of the state is pretty sparse in fact. We stayed the night at the “Cabins of Amidon” and campground, which was a few mins from the trail head and had last min Saturday night availability + showers. We were sad to hear that the “Bunker Bar” is no longer-staff is difficult everywhere- but it was a super neat area and great place to stop for the night. They rent cabins too if you aren’t tenting it.

Overall impressions? This is an easy hike-but I wouldn’t wear flip flops. The trail can be slippery and rugged. Totally worth it? Yeah…..if we weren’t passing through, we would have loved to stop at Theodore Rosevelt Nat’l park….spoiler alert: even the rest stop is beautiful!

We were surprised by how beautiful that area of the country can be-and super proud of Sage for summiting his first state high point.

As always-thanks for reading. Hope you have a chance to get out enjoy some Days Off your own!

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