Devil's Tower

I awoke to an overlook of Billings, Montana.  I proceeded to drive down into town and stopped at Hardee’s for Breakfast and a Bathroom Break.  I used to love Hardee’s but recently I am noticing the food is mostly just grease and salt.  I ended up not eating all I ordered just because it really didn’t taste all that good.  I checked my route and saw I would be getting close to Devil’s Tower on my return trip so I programmed that into the GPS and headed that way.

Devil’s Tower is pretty interesting.  I am sure we are all familiar with it as it was the site for Spielburg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.  I thought it would just be enormous and it was large but when compared to the tetons it is just a rock.  I couldn’t believe it but people were climbing it.  It appears all you have to do to scale the monument is fill out a card.  I listened to a ranger talk about it.  It appears the youngest person to climb the rock was just 6 years old, the oldest was 81.  I did not walk the trail around it but chose instead to drive back down into the valley for a photographic vantage points to capitalize on.  From here since the weather was moderately nice I thought I would go on to Mount Rushmore.

Mount Rushmore was not meant to be as on the trip there it got very foggy and got to a point you couldn’t see but 30 feet in front of you.  I got back on the main road and end up going through Sturgis which is famous for motorcycles and their riders.  I did end up making it to Badlands which was on my eventual list of places to visit but the storm I was trying to beat out was catching up and it was very windy and cold there too.  I headed on to Sioux Falls where I slept in my car again.