The road from Big Horn to Devils Tower is about 200 miles of very sparsely populated rolling hills and more sparsely populated rolling hills and more spar......... One thing is for sure, you wouldn’t want to be broke down and waiting for road service on Montana Highway 212.
Anyhow we made the run without any problems and settled in at a campground almost at the base of Devils Tower. We can clearly see the mountain from our campsite. It was very hot here today so after arrival at the hottest part of the day we decided to do some planning for the next few days and go to the tower that this evening. We secured reservations for tomorrow in Sturgis South Dakota, but the most important thing we did was get appointments for Maggie and Dixie to get their hair cut on Wednesday morning. Maggie especially needs to get some hair cut off in order to deal with the heat. Dixie has a gray undercoat so cutting the black outer layer of hair makes her a lot less susceptible to heat.
After dinner we drove up to the parking area at the base of the rubble field around the tower and hiked up to the rim trail. Most of the tourist had left for the day; we only encountered one family and two young men on the trail. The family quickly passed us and was out of sight around the many twists and turns in the trail. About a quarter of the way around the young men left the trail and climbed thru the rubble field. We sat on a bench and watched as they ascended to a small rock shelf maybe 150 feet above us. They had no climbing gear or camping gear that we could see, but one of then did have a small pack. We assume they are planning on spending the night there, we never saw them again. We meandered around the base trail stopping at many of the benches and viewing spots to contemplate what we saw and read on the informational plaques. After we came up with plausible rebuttals to the scientists theories and the Indian lore about the tower, we moved on to finding faces in the rock and other tower tales requiring deep thought and vivid imaginations. We descended from the mountain at 9pm; it was dark already in the woods, very close encounter of the third kind-ish.
Tomorrow we move to Sturgis South Dakota home of the greatest motorcycle rally ever, anywhere, anytime. The rally isn’t until August but we’re here to buy the T-shirt, see Mount Rushmore, and some of the other sights in the area.
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