Wyoming's rolling hills

Snow-capped Big Horn Mountains in the distance...

Tue, 6/24/08

Little Big Horn, MT: Left Devil’s Tower this morning at 7:20—an early start for us. Stopped in Gillette, WY, for fuel and breakfast. Driving across Wyoming on I90 was beautiful high rolling grasslands—mostly ranches. We actually saw a guy rounding up some cattle on a horse—kind of an anachronism really. What a great place to have a horse though—no trees and this vast area of rolling hills. You could ride forever. About 30 miles past Gillette we started seeing the snow-capped Big Horn Mountains. And the grassland turned into more scrub land covered with sage brush—sort of like the desert southwest. Prong Horns are everywhere. We arrived at Hardin, MT, at about 2:00. Staying at a Good Sam park. Not the greatest, but we’re only here two nights and we have full hook-ups. We’re going to go to the Little Big Horn battlefield and museum tomorrow and maybe check out the Big Horn Canyon Recreation area. Supposed to have bad weather. We’ll see.

Mon, 6/23/08

Devil’s Tower, WY: Devil’s Tower was our first National Monument—designated by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. So, Wyoming has the first National Park (Yellowstone) and the first National Monument (Devil’s Tower). We had another storm during the night—a pretty fierce one. It rained hard for about an hour. Hail too. But this morning dawned clear and sunny. So we drove over to the visitor’s center and hiked the tower trail which goes along the base of the tower through a beautiful boulder-strewn pine forest. Climbers come here from all over the world to climb this monolith. But, during the month of June there is a moratorium so the various Indian tribes can perform their sacred ceremonies and leave their prayer bundles. We saw several prayer bundles along the trail and encountered three Indian women performing some kind of ceremony. The Indians still consider this a sacred place. Indeed, this is an unusual formation formed when molten magma was forced into sedimentary rocks above it and cooled underground. Over millions of years erosion of the sedimentary rock exposed Devils Tower and accentuated Little Missouri Buttes just to the west. A beautiful day today—85 degrees. We leave tomorrow morning for the Custer Battlefield at the Little Big Horn in Montana.