Off we went to the Medora Musical at the Burning Hills Amphitheatre built in the Badlands of North Dakota. Our timing was great as they were having a salute to Veterans and their families. Veterans were given free tickets, the National Guard was there to retire the flag, and "Teddy Roosevelt" showed up to give his presidential speech! The views from the amphitheatre area are amazing. We had some time before the show started to just sit on the benches overlooking some of the vastness of the bad badlands. Beautiful afternoon and evening.
Here's Dennis sitting on one of the benches.
Over looking the Chateau de Mores (the house with the red roof). You can see Medora at the foot of the hills. Medora was founded in 1883 by the 24 year old French nobleman, the Marquis de Mores. He named the town for his bride, the former Medora Von Hoffman, daughter of a wealthy New York City banker
With financial backing fro his father-in-law, the Marquis founded the town and built a beef-packing plant, hotel, several stores and the Chateau de Mores, their summer home. All of his various enterprises ended in financial failure by the fall of 1886. In 1886 they returned to France.
The pavilion where the "pitchfork" steak fondue is at. They actually deep fry the steaks on pitchforks. After all this is the wild wild west.
This is again overlooking Medora. You can see some of the buildings in the trees past the house on this side of the hills. The house with the red roof is the Chateau de Mores.
A zoomed in picture of the Chateau de Mores and of Medora
A National Guardsmen looking at the scenery
And here's President Roosevelt greeting folks.
President Roosevelt giving one of his speeches.
Overlooking the amphitheater before it started
Going down the longest escalator I have ever seen, to get to the seats.
Do you see Myron and Karen?
Getting ready for the show. The 2,900 seats available were filled
I love that they use horses in the show
Before the show started, a P-51 flew over. You can see it in the cloud
The P-51 again
They had all the kids come on stage for a presentation and a free gift
Various clips from the musical
The show is partially in daylight and then into the night!
Roosevelt joined the U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment which became known as the Rough Riders to fight in the Spanish-American War. He served from May-September, 1898 and quickly rose to colonel. On July 1, he and the Rough Riders had a major victory at San Juan charging up Kettle Hill. He was part of the occupying force of Santiago. This part of the show depicted Roosevelt's history
Now for the various costumes used during the 50 year history of the Medora Musical
Near the end of the show, they show the rider coming down the mountain on a white horse.
The finale
Fireworks!
And the end of the show.
We all enjoyed the show very much. It is the 50th Anniversary of the Musical. They did a tremendous job of incorporating bits and pieces of wardrobe and songs from the past 50 years and history from the Theodore Roosevelt era.
This is the first level of the escalator, the 2nd one is on the bottom edge. This is just to get to the half way down on the seating.
No comments:
Post a Comment