Day 51 - Devils Tower

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Posted from: Devils Tower, WY - Devils Tower KOA

Miles driven: 536

Total trip miles: 9,312

We are changing our plans for the day. Matt decided he would rather drive all the way to Devils Tower from West Yellowstone in a single day. We had planned to split it into two days. That is a looong day of travel, but it gives us two days in the Black Hills area instead of just one.

We took a family vacation to the Black Hills, South Dakota area four years ago, but we did not drive up to see Devils Tower. It was definitely on the list this time. So we took off across Montana and Wyoming.

We started out the day driving up scenic highway 89. It was beautiful. Montana really outdoes itself on this stretch of road. Along this road, we were following a small SUV. Unfortunately, at one point the SUV slammed on its breaks in order to perform a U-turn to go back and look at a scenic pullout. Matt. Locked. Up. All. Eight. Tires. It was ugly. We thought we were going to hit them. Matt laid on his horn to make sure they knew what was coming and could hopefully get out of the way. We had time to stop and tragedy was avoided. People...There is no beautiful view worth your life. Never do what he did. It took Matt several miles to recover.

This day was our last day to enjoy mountain views. We are driving back into the flat farmland of America. We all said good bye to the mountains.

Caleb likes to play a game when we are driving. Whenever you see a yellow vehicle you say "Score!" If you see a lot of yellow vehicles (think passing a Pizza Ranch with all of their yellow delivery trucks), you say "Score jackpot!" Even if we are driving to church or karate practice, he plays this game. Today, Caleb was sound asleep, and then as clear as could be he says, "Score jackpot!" He was apparently playing the game in his dream. It was so funny. 

Oh, and then this happened. We have traveled with eight gallons of fuel the entire trip. We had yet to use any of it...until today. The weather has been very mild the past few days, but now we were driving in west Wyoming on Interstate 90 and it was hot. To add to that, there was hill after hill...And very few gas stations. We had made it a point to fill up at every major stop we saw, but we hadn't seen one for quite awhile. We were 11 miles from the next truck stop in Gillette, WY, but we were low and concerned about vapor locking again. We had a long hill or two before we would see fuel.

So here we are. We pulled off and filled up.

When we finally arrived at the truck stop, I walked in to use the restroom and saw these. I mean, what?!? Where have these been our entire trip?? The west is not famous for grass. One of the things we noticed was the lack of grass, the missing smell of fresh cut grass, or walking barefoot in grass. This would have addressed all of our homesickness needs! Oh well. We would be back in the Midwest in a few miles. I'm sure grass is about to reenter our lives in vivid green color. We will be patient.

I took a picture of this beautiful cloud...and then it occurred to me that maybe we were headed into some weather. It looked like a beautiful storm cloud.

I pulled up radar. Hmm...We are the black dot. We were almost to our campground (actually just above the "90" in this screen shot). The pink ugly looking blob was headed directly for the campground.

We knew that if we beat the rain to the campground, we would have just a few minutes to set up before we got very wet. So we had a little family pep talk while Matt focused on getting us there as quick as possible without breaking any (or too many) laws. The pep talk went something like this: Okay guys. This is it. This is what we've been training for the past 50 days. This is the ultimate test of our speed, skill and agility. This is our Olympics! We can do this....GO TEAM! [Note: The amount of eye rolling this pep talk received could have been its own Olympic event.]

Here we are in the final stretch. Did I mention that our campground is 10 feet from the entrance to Devils Tower? And can I just say that the picture next to the word "random" in the dictionary is a picture of Devils Tower. It really is kind of crazy to see this tower looming straight up in the middle of nowhere.

Long story short. We made it. The team performed flawlessly. We had the camper set up (backed in, leveled, wheels chalked, unhitched, leveled again, jacks down, stairs out, plugged in, water hooked up, slide outs out) in 8 minutes. Is that even possible?! Heck yeah! The lightening was motivational...Oh and we still had time to run across the road and put away our neighbor's awning and lawn chairs. It let loose right as we finished.

This was the view out our window. It was kind of neat to stay so close. The movie Close Encounters of a Third Kind (Steven Spielberg) was filmed at our campground, so they show the movie each night at 8:00 on their patio. We opted out. It had been a long day of travel, and kids with nightmares did not sound like a good way to wrap up the trip.

What a day! Never a dull moment.