Now that we were fully relaxed from a down day yesterday, we were ready to return to full blown tourist mode. But first, a quick trip into Deadwood for a little breakfast at the Pump House, and a trip across the street to mail back the excess stuff. Today, we are off to visit the Devils Tower National Monument in Devils Tower, Wyoming. Note that Devils does not have an apostrophe as it was left off as a clerical error in the naming, and it would take too much paperwork now to correct the error. 12 years of Catholic school makes it difficult for me to accept the error, but I'm doing my best to deal with it.
     Since we are starting and finishing this trip at the Spearfish Canyon Lodge, we decided to make the trip in a loop . We approach Devils Tower from the south, but leave by the north to not repeat the same roads - part of some motorcycle rider code. So we began our trip on US-85S which took us quickly into Wyoming. Scenic mountainous road, we even saw a couple of deer and what looked like a badger. As we crossed into Wyoming, we left the Black Hill mountains of South Dakota behind us in favor of the wide open spaces of the Wyoming cattle ranch. There were rolling hills, and mountains in the distance, but the sheer size of everything was breathtaking. At 10 in the morning, you could still see the moon in the sky. Even though it was a cold 53 degrees when we left the hotel, it was quickly warming, and was into the 70's by the time we turned north on WY-585N.
     Now when we made that turn onto WY-585N, we were just beaten to the turn by a logging truck, pulling a logging trailer, both filled with logs. Luckily, or so we thought, he was accelerating slowly and I was able to quickly pass him so that we had the entire road to ourselves for the next 30 miles . The road was beautiful, and Jody and I were caught up in the scenic beauty. When that happens, I tend to pay less attention to my speed and slow down to gawk. The problem is that every time I slow down, this 18 wheeler logging truck looms in my rearview mirror. I speed up, and when we go up a hill, he drops back. When we go down a hill, he catches up and looms ever larger. I begin to feel like Dennis Weaver in Duel - a terrible film where Dennis Weaver is being chased by a maniacal 18 wheeler. Finally, about 3 miles from the end of WY-585N , a car pulls out in front of me, I slow down, and the logging truck and trailer comes flying by us both at about 70 miles an hour. I know I have dodged a bullet, and we never see the logging truck again.
   The remainder of the trip on US-14W and WY-24E is also beautiful, and then we see the Devils Tower looming in the distance. I begin to feel like Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (I don't know what's with the movie references today). We stop at the scenic overlook to take a picture, and when we look back, the bike is overrun with a bus load of French speaking tourists, apparently, none of whom speak any English . We got away as quickly as we could. At the entry to the park is another Prairie Dog Village, similar to Badlands, so we stop and check it out. The prairie dogs are much bolder in Devils Tower, they come right up very close, and are not very skittish at all. We stayed a while and took lots of pictures - also trying to put some distance between us and the French speaking tour bus.
     Finally we arrived at the Devils Tower monument itself. Since it's only a National Monument, and not a National Park, there is no 20 minute movie, so instead we listened to one of the rangers give a 20 minute talk. The place was fairly crowded, and it was bright and sunny with temperatures well into the 80's. Fortunately, we had the forethought to bring shorts, and changed clothes in the restroom before beginning our hike. We only did the close-in hike, completely around the tower, about 1.3 miles. There is a further out 2.8 mile hike around the tower, but we wanted to stay in close. The Devils Tower itself is certainly something that should not be missed . The hike was paved and not too strenuous, but most people stayed around the Visitors Center side of the path, so there were very few people when we reached the halfway point of the hike.
     The other thing we noticed was that there were some people climbing the tower itself, a couple were midway up, and a couple were near the top. It was hard to see with the naked eye, but the telephoto lens did a good job of capturing the action. It looked really terrifying to me who is afraid of heights, but the holds are so precarious, I'm sure it would scare almost anyone.
     One of the things we noticed was that a lot of the motorcycles we had been seeing were Honda Valkyries like the one I used to have before I got the Goldwing. It turns out they were having a Valkyrie rally, and there were over 300 Valkyries that showed up in nearby Spearfish, SD. We met a lot of the Valkyrie riders and talked about bikes, and about riding in the area.
    The remaining part of the trip on WY-24E/SD-34E was a scenic as the rest. The ranch land of the Wyoming gave way to the Black Hill mountains of South Dakota as we traveled east . Whe we reached the town of Aladdin, WY - population 15 - we saw a sign for a historic site to the left. We stopped to check it out and found it was the remains of the Aladdin Tipple, apparently the original reason for the existence of the town of Aladdin. It was a curious looking building, and having no idea what a tipple was, I turned to my trusty Wikipedia. It turns out that a "tipple" is a building that covers an opening in a coal mine where the mining cars dump the coal down a chute in the tipple to an awaiting railroad car. Learn something new everyday!
   We were tired of eating in the same restaurant next door to the hotel every night, so we ventured into downtown Lead for Subway. Tomorrow we are off to the Theodore Roosevelt National park in Medora, North Dakota, It's just an overnight trip, as we are back in Keystone, SD for the next 3 days to see the remaining South Dakota sights.

230.3 miles today
3801.9 miles total

8.434 gallons today
95.836 gallons total