We stopped in town to wander the interesting little shops and to find some breakfast. I was surprised by the vast quantity of Indian memorabilia in the stores. I knew this was cowboy country, but the level of Indian kitsch was disturbing to me somehow. It felt like going to Germany and seeing little boutiques selling toy yarmulkes and dreidels. Maybe that’s just me.
We finally got on the road, crossing east through Wyoming. We climbed through the Bighorn Mountains pass and made our way to a small town named Dayton. From there, we used the GPS and a software package named Route 66 to pick a backroad route towards the city Sheridan. Finding the first turn was a little tricky, but we did locate it and started down the road, watching our progress on the GPS. However, we were surprised when the paved road ended and became dirt and gravel. Hrm, well, the GPS still shows us on track, and this little stretch was only four miles until the next turn, so sure, why not?
After a bouncy stretch down washboard gravel roads, we found the expected turn. Which was also a gravel road, this one five miles.
Take a minute to appreciate the juxtaposition of the scene; bouncing down gravel roads past fields, cattle, crops and farmhouses, navigating via GPS and mapping software on a laptop. Laugh it up.
We soon found our next turn. Yes, you guessed it, also a gravel road, this one eleven miles long. No point turning back now. Except, of course, it started raining. I could picture making the phone call, “Hello, AAA? We’re on this gravel road, well, it’s several gravel roads, really. (pause) No ma’am, we’re not drunk.” Remember the car wash of the morning? Long gone.
Eventually we made it to Sheridan, and returned to the shameless decadence of paved roads. From there we continued east, passing a massive coal quarry, and twice passing unbelievably long trains of nothing but coal cars.
By afternoon, we had reached our destination for the day, Devils Tower National Monument. We found a spot in the campground in the park, and decided to use the late afternoon sunlight to hike the Red Beds Trail that circles around the entire tower. The view of the tower in the setting sunlight was amazing, and so inspirational that we kept the Close Encounters jokes to a minimum.
Hiking through the woods, we spotted a deer about 40 feet away, who stared right at us, and still decided to continue coming our direction.
While taking pictures of the tower, we saw several large birds riding the thermals on the sunny side of the cliff wall. As we hiked deeper into the woods around the base of the tower, we spotted a dead tree with a flock of the birds resting; I think they were turkey vultures.
Also on the trail, we saw several rabbits, which I referred to as “bunny rabbits” several times until I could hear in my head the voice of our friend Owen saying “They’re called rabbits. Only children call them bunnies.”
And then in the pasture between the two and our campground, there was a large colony of prairie dogs that chirped in warning as we walked near.
This was a nice little campground, although it was situated between a field of mooing cows and a nearby KOA campground which seemed to have 70s rock music playing through a PA system, a strange mixture.