Devils Tower National Monument: Close Encounters of the Natural Kind

This morning we had breakfast at our Walmart camp and picked up some groceries. The Walmart had an in-house McDonald's, but they did not serve my favorite, bacon, egg and cheese biscuits. In fact, they had no biscuits at all. They served biscuits across town at the other McDonald's, but not here. Go figure. I had to settle for an egg McMuffin (Dorcas' favorite).

We hit the road westbound on I-90 headed for Wyoming. We only had 110 miles to our next stop, Devils Tower National Monument, so we considered some side trips. Our choices were Sturgis, a biker's mecca and Deadwood, a historic western town. We decided to pass on Sturgis and head to Deadwood. Big mistake. Parking in Deadwood is at a premium, but they did have a dedicated RV parking area on the far end of town. The problem was that they were having a school walk/run event that day and had converted the RV parking lot into the staging area for the event. There were barricades, school buses and school kids all over the place. We didn't realize all the congestion was there until we got trapped in the parking lot. Nobody seemed to understand why we were trying to park an RV in the RV parking lot and looked at us like we were idiots. Finally we got a yokel to move his pick-up, which was blocking the exit and escaped. I headed out of town as quickly as I could and did not try to find another parking space. Our drive through town did not reveal any reason to stay anyway. Deadwood was a big let down.

As we approached Devils Tower National Monument, we had excellent views of the mountain starting about 15 miles away. It is a very impressive structure. We arrived at the park in mid-afternoon and parked at the Belle Fourche Campground on the banks of the Belle Fourche River at the base of the mountain. Rain was threatening, so we hurried up the hill to do the 1.3 mile hike around the base of the mountain and visit the Visitor's Center. We finished our hike and returned and toured the massive prairie dog town near camp. We arrived back at camp shortly before the rains arrived. About dusk it began to rain and rained most of the evening. We had a very short but very pleasant visit at Devils Tower.