The Devil's in the Details
            From Cody to Devils Tower, Wyoming

Day 7:  After making it over Sylvan Pass (8530 feet) leaving Yellowstone, we stopped in Cody, Wyoming for the night. There is a wonderful museum in Cody, where I had spent time with my sister and grandkids on our trailer trip several years ago, but we didn't have time for a lengthy stay in Cody on this trip. So we set out early the next morning for the mountains that separate northwestern and northeastern Wyoming--The Bighorns.

It was nice to have sun after the dreary overcast in Yellowstone, and I snapped pictures along the way.  I bet I took a dozen shots of these surreal red hills in the distance.

Click on pictures to enlarge or for slide show

Hauling along our ancient cold chest paid off. We saved a lot of money and could stop to eat anywhere, as we did at this rest stop near Greybull. A bonus was the small airplane museum next door at the South Big Horn County Airport. We only looked through the fence, but Greg was thrilled.

More red hills, and farms nestled in lovely valleys.

Then, into the Bighorn Mountains. I love to take pictures of mountains, and the fluffy clouds made it all the more interesting.

Shell Falls was a delightful surprise and a welcome break to get out of the car and stretch. A gorgeous, sunny day. A beautiful waterfall. What more could we ask?

Love this picture of a rock with lichen on it beside the short trail leading to the falls.

Shell Falls, WY

Another surprise--a solar trash compactor! We were to learn a short while later that this particular device would have been useless any farther into the Bighorns on a day like today. Only a few miles up the road (the operative word being "up"), the view looked like this.

As we traveled up, up, up over Granite Pass (9033 feet), and for the next fifteen miles or so, the view looked like this. Bummer! However, we got surprisingly good gas mileage. Or maybe not so surprising, when you consider we were traveling about twenty miles per hour most of the way.

But perseverance paid off. Finally, we descended to the high grassland prairie, hit I-90, and started making better time...

 

...through Gillette, and on to Moorcroft, where we detoured to one of my favorite monuments--Devils Tower , a volcanic extrusion that seems to rise out of nowhere to dominate the surrounding Belle Fourche River valley. It's no wonder that Richard Dreyfus was drawn to the monolith in the movie "Close Encounters of a Third Kind." That's Greg in the parking lot in front of the tower. And look--Sunshine!

At 1,267 feet above the surrounding plains and over 5000 feet above sea level, Devils Tower is a destination for climbers. There are three major theories for its formation (left). I still remember the Native American story of how it was formed from a visit with my parents when I was a preteen.

Seven little girls were out playing one day when some bears came out of the woods. The girls ran , but knew they couldn't outrun the bears. They jumped onto a low rock and, they prayed to be saved. The rock started to grow upward, carrying the girls with it. The bears tried to reach them but kept slipping down the growing mountain, their claws digging into the sides and making deep grooves. Eventually, the girls were carried all the way to heaven. You can still see them there today, twinkling in the sky.
We call them The Seven Sisters (pleiades).

There are many stories, but this is the one I remember, and still the one I like best.

We hiked the 1.25-mile Tower Trail around the base and I took pictures from every angle (which I won't post here--you're welcome). It had been a long day for Greg. He'd done all the mountain driving, which was tense in the fog, and by the time we got half way around Devils Tower, he was pretty much ready to call it a day. But isn't that a terrific view of the Belle Fourche River valley behind him?


Devils Tower was our first national monument, established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

Two red squirrels playing chase on a lodgepole pine. You can see the head of the second one peeking out from behind the tree.

Prairie Dog

Leaving Devils Tower

We finally said good-bye to Devils Tower, and headed for our motel in Sundance, the town from which the Sundance Kid took his name. It had been a long day, but one full of fantastic sights, a year's worth of weather, and chances to get out of the car to hike.

Join us next Saturday, when we head for the Black Hills of South Dakota, home of Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park, Wind Cave and much, much more!