The Drive Home: Devil's Tower

Our journey home is five days long. The first day was the hardest - a very long stretch to arrive late in Bozeman Montana. The second day was also pretty long, but it ended with short side trip to view the United States' first national monument: Devil's Tower in Wyoming.

Steve has wanted to see Devil's Tower since he first watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Apparently, this is the rock that Richard Dreyfuss sculpted out of mashed potatoes. Seeing it in real life, I tried to remember if he simulated the striations on the side using his fork... American Indians had stories that attributed the marks to the claws of a giant bear trying to reach some Indian maidens seeking refuge on the top of the giant rock:

Devil's Tower is about 30 miles off the interstate, and we forgot to check the gas gauge before heading towards it. Without the Garmin telling us the closest gas station, we may have run out of gas. We stopped at a small place with a sign claiming to have gas, but the old pump outside probably hadn't worked for many years. At least we met this friendly dog there:

He watched with interest as I shot pictures of the monument standing on a picnic table, trying to get a view over their fence. They had a 'viewing tower' there, but I would have had to pay them to use it, and I wasn't about to do that. We could have driven closer and probably found a better viewing area (a free one), but we were too worried about running out of gas before we made it back to the interstate and the gas stations the Garmin told us would be there. Next time we will check the gas gauge before heading out onto the backroads!