We got an early start this morning, anticipating a longish day in the car to get to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. On the way, we stopped at a bakery in Custer to fill up on breakfast. Charlie and Natalie, of course, feasted on gigantic doughnuts, and Keith and I shared a caramel-pecan roll the size of Charlie’s head. Keith also ordered scrambled eggs and hashbrowns, which he smothered in a green-chile sauce, a house-specialty, and he raved about it the rest of the day.
The waitress asked us if we were in town for the “bike rally,” and I must say that she certainly has us pegged. The annual Sturgis motorcycle rally is next week; that must be why we have been noticing groups of Harleys here and there along the road. In a few days the nearby towns will be infested with 700,000 bikers.
It took us about two hours to get from Custer to Devil’s Tower. As we approached, Keith played the soundtrack to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” which we watched with the kids the week before we left on the trip. I have to say, the music certainly set a tense, mysterious mood as Devil’s Tower loomed in the distance. Goosebumps.
Devil’s Tower is a National Monument -- actually the first-ever National Monument; Theodore Roosevelt bestowed that designation on the site in 1906. So, you know what that means: Junior Ranger badges. We worked on the JR activity books and then hiked 1.5 miles around the base of the tower.
We learned today that Devil’s Tower is not an extinct volcano, but rather a tower of igneous rock that formed underground when magma bubbled up through layers of soft sandstone and shale and hardened. Over 5 million years, the surrounding ground eroded away, revealing Devil’s Tower. It was so-named by Colonel Richard Dodge in 1875.
We decided to take the scenic route back to our cozy little KOA campsite -- through the Spearfish Canyon, between Spearfish and Lead, SD. As we left Devil’s Tower, we noticed that the beautiful clear day had suddenly turned overcast. In fact, the clouds were looking downright sinister. By the time we got to Spearfish Canyon, the skies opened up and poured down on us, and the temperature dropped about 20 degrees. When we got through Lead and were heading south toward Hill City, we noticed snow -- yes, snow! -- in thick schmears alongside the road, for about a mile-long stretch.
In the week that we’ve been here, we’ve noticed that the weather is spotty in the Black Hills. It may be pouring in one place, while the town down the road stays dry. So, we were wondering if our campground, 30 miles away, was spared the downpour. It was not. When we got back, we found the place to be soaked. It’s a good thing we closed up the tent and the teardrop before we left this morning.
Hopefully the tent will dry out tonight. We’ll pack everything up tomorrow morning and start heading back east. We plan to spend the next night or two in Badlands National Park before hitting the road hard to get to Lake Superior by Sunday.
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