Wyoming and the Devil

May 30, 2018

After spending 3 nights in a Best Western in Rapid City, we had to reload our car. You would think by now we would have learned to pack properly, but as the saying goes “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” By 10 AM we finally headed out toward Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway, but not before stopping in Deadwood for Starbucks coffee.

It is getting difficult to describe all of the beautiful roads we’ve been on without being repetitive, and we haven’t even reached Yellowstone! My vocabulary just isn’t large enough to properly describe what we’ve seen or properly differentiate between them. Even photos don’t convey what we’ve been seeing. Today we were surrounded by beautiful, rocky canyon walls with the Spearfish River running beside us. One particularly lovely view was of Bridal Veil Falls.

For lunch we stopped in the town of Spearfish. The restaurant was called the Redwater Kitchen and the food was excellent and quite sophisticated. Evidently the town is popular with retirees (there are several golf courses) and it is home of a state university. Later that afternoon we crossed over from South Dakota into Wyoming.

Looming in the distance, well before you reach it, was Devil’s Tower. In 1906 Theodore Roosevelt designated the formation the nation’s first national monument. It continues to be a sacred place for Native Americans and was known as Bear Lodge. Somehow this was incorrectly interpreted to mean Devil’s Tower.

I won’t go into the details of how the tower was formed, because there are at least three different theories. However, it is interesting to note that throughout the entire formation it is composed of symmetrical columns. The tallest are more than 600 feet tall and the widest from 10 to 20 feet wide. The columns are 4, 5, 6 and 7-sided. To me they resembled crystals on a major scale.

Dan and I took a loop trail that wound around the base of the formation, 1.3 miles. It looks a little different from every angle and with the changes in sunlight. The monument itself is surrounded by cattle ranches and grassy plains that stretch far off into the distance. An impressive sight on its own. We also spotted some climbers on the Tower, as well as a snake – not a rattle snake.

Then it was time to get back into the car and head to our hotel in Gillette, Wyoming. The town is in the center of cattle country. We are truly out West. For one thing the number of pickup trucks and large SUV’s in the hotel parking lot and on the roads is incredible. There are hardly any passenger cars. We also overheard one of the guests use the term “dang it” when talking to someone on the phone. In addition, the speed limits in both South Dakota and Wyoming are 80 mph on the interstates; 70 mph and on the county side roads. With the roads twisting back and forth we often found we were uncomfortable driving so fast.