•7:16 AM
October 2, 2010 7:16 a.m.
Woke up very close to Devils Tower, Wyoming.
Temperature was 35 degrees!
Odometer read 27,579.
The elevation was 3880 feet.
On the way to visiting Devils Tower in the morning, we got to see a prairie dog town. Imagine a large flat field of grass with dozens of mounds and a prairie dog posted as sentinel outside each mound. They were very cute and they had a shrill "bark". The children loved to see them, and imitated their sound for several days thereafter (which was good, for I kept forgetting what they sounded like and they were happy to remind me). We also saw quite a few deer, especially at the campground.
Our plan was to walk the inner loop trail around the monument. It was certainly good exercise for us before our long drive to Billings. This area around the tower is such a remote area, and it is interesting to see the homes (sometimes opulent) of the people who choose to build in such a remote area. But I digress; the loop trail had many variations of immediate surroundings. At times you are walking among large boulders on either side, at times you are walking among pine trees, at times you have a long distance view away from the monument, at one time you are walking very close to the monument. It was formed, if I remember, as an igneous intrusion, or an injection of igneous rock inside the opening of a volcano, from which all the surrounding rock eroded away and only the relatively harder igneous remains. Well, whatever happened, it was unusual because you don't see these things every day, not even in Wyoming. It looks like a giant tree stump as you drive toward it, and it continues to get bigger and bigger as you walk closer around it.
Before I forget, another thing. There are signs on the trail that some Native Americans and "other people groups" consider the monument and the area around it to be sacred ground, and that hikers are to be respectful by not disturbing the prayer cloths and prayer bundles that have been left behind. So in various places, there were red rags tied to tree limbs, or small cloth bundles that are decorated with plastic beads and feathers, presumably as prayer offerings much as a Roman Catholic might leave a lit candle behind in church. The only difference being that the object of worship, here, is considerably different, and the irony of the monument being called Devils Tower did not go unnoticed by me. I am not superstitious, but when Sweet Girl found a bead on the trail and wanted to take it along with her, I had misgivings, and had her leave it behind.
From my travel journal later that day:
I wish I could relax more on some of these mountain downgrades. Sigh. Now I know what my mother went through. So much open prairie with nothing built on it. A flock of sheep! Different landscapes around every curve.
Let's just say, when it comes to mountain downgrades, I have become my mother, grabbing my "crash handle" (the passenger assist handle) when I feel uncomfortable with our speed on the winding downgrades. No pun intended, but we live in a flat state, and every time we take a mountain trip, my driver (SRM) seems to go through a learning curve again with driving mountain grades. I was much better on this trip than I was a few years ago in the Georgia mountains (talk about the steepest downgrades we've ever been on! Try 12%, 15%, even 24%! Is that nuts?). Fortunately, most of the grades on this trip have been from 6-8%, the only difference being that it went on for many more miles than they did back in Georgia (the price of keeping the percentage down, I guess).
The Sprinter van is an excellent vehicle for mountain grades; even the commercial vehicle of choice for organizations charged with transporting passengers up and down mountains. But Self-Reliant Man's wisdom in protecting the brakes on downgrades can be unnerving at times.
We continued to drive much of the afternoon on I-90 all the way to Billings, and the traffic was so light the entire time. Montana became flatter than Wyoming had been, and we drove across the Crow Indian Reservation. The exciting news was that Billings brought the first Cracker Barrel restaurant we had seen since Iowa. Also, the Billings KOA was, as we discovered, the first ever KOA, and it was a pretty nice one. Scored a 9 with us.
Woke up very close to Devils Tower, Wyoming.
Temperature was 35 degrees!
Odometer read 27,579.
The elevation was 3880 feet.
On the way to visiting Devils Tower in the morning, we got to see a prairie dog town. Imagine a large flat field of grass with dozens of mounds and a prairie dog posted as sentinel outside each mound. They were very cute and they had a shrill "bark". The children loved to see them, and imitated their sound for several days thereafter (which was good, for I kept forgetting what they sounded like and they were happy to remind me). We also saw quite a few deer, especially at the campground.
Our plan was to walk the inner loop trail around the monument. It was certainly good exercise for us before our long drive to Billings. This area around the tower is such a remote area, and it is interesting to see the homes (sometimes opulent) of the people who choose to build in such a remote area. But I digress; the loop trail had many variations of immediate surroundings. At times you are walking among large boulders on either side, at times you are walking among pine trees, at times you have a long distance view away from the monument, at one time you are walking very close to the monument. It was formed, if I remember, as an igneous intrusion, or an injection of igneous rock inside the opening of a volcano, from which all the surrounding rock eroded away and only the relatively harder igneous remains. Well, whatever happened, it was unusual because you don't see these things every day, not even in Wyoming. It looks like a giant tree stump as you drive toward it, and it continues to get bigger and bigger as you walk closer around it.
Before I forget, another thing. There are signs on the trail that some Native Americans and "other people groups" consider the monument and the area around it to be sacred ground, and that hikers are to be respectful by not disturbing the prayer cloths and prayer bundles that have been left behind. So in various places, there were red rags tied to tree limbs, or small cloth bundles that are decorated with plastic beads and feathers, presumably as prayer offerings much as a Roman Catholic might leave a lit candle behind in church. The only difference being that the object of worship, here, is considerably different, and the irony of the monument being called Devils Tower did not go unnoticed by me. I am not superstitious, but when Sweet Girl found a bead on the trail and wanted to take it along with her, I had misgivings, and had her leave it behind.
From my travel journal later that day:
I wish I could relax more on some of these mountain downgrades. Sigh. Now I know what my mother went through. So much open prairie with nothing built on it. A flock of sheep! Different landscapes around every curve.
Let's just say, when it comes to mountain downgrades, I have become my mother, grabbing my "crash handle" (the passenger assist handle) when I feel uncomfortable with our speed on the winding downgrades. No pun intended, but we live in a flat state, and every time we take a mountain trip, my driver (SRM) seems to go through a learning curve again with driving mountain grades. I was much better on this trip than I was a few years ago in the Georgia mountains (talk about the steepest downgrades we've ever been on! Try 12%, 15%, even 24%! Is that nuts?). Fortunately, most of the grades on this trip have been from 6-8%, the only difference being that it went on for many more miles than they did back in Georgia (the price of keeping the percentage down, I guess).
The Sprinter van is an excellent vehicle for mountain grades; even the commercial vehicle of choice for organizations charged with transporting passengers up and down mountains. But Self-Reliant Man's wisdom in protecting the brakes on downgrades can be unnerving at times.
We continued to drive much of the afternoon on I-90 all the way to Billings, and the traffic was so light the entire time. Montana became flatter than Wyoming had been, and we drove across the Crow Indian Reservation. The exciting news was that Billings brought the first Cracker Barrel restaurant we had seen since Iowa. Also, the Billings KOA was, as we discovered, the first ever KOA, and it was a pretty nice one. Scored a 9 with us.
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| What an unexpected treat! Checking out the Prairie Dog Town. |
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| Best shot I could get. |
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| Devils Tower - yet another notch in the Sprinter's belt. |
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| From the trail in the early morning shade. Very imposing structure. |
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| I followed two cute cowboys for most of the trail. |
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| Chips and I discuss a prayer bundle. |
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| The way most of Wyoming looked from the road. |
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| Once we got used to the "traffic" we were okay. |
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