Sistah Pat

Woke up early so we can hit the road.  We’re heading to Devils Tower, Wyoming today.  That’s the mountain where they filmed Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Everytime I think of that mountain, I see Richard Dreyfuss sculpting it out of mashed potatoes.  It’s an 8 hour drive by car but I’m learning that means 9 to 9 1/2 in Manny if the mountains are steep.  Then…if we can, we want to continue down the road another two hours to the Crazy Horse Memorial.

This place reminds me of Alaska a little bit.  We’re so far north, we have a little bit of that “White Night” phenomenon.  It didn’t get dark until around 11:00 last night and I woke up at 5:30 to find that it was already daylight.  Yesterday, when DS took the twins to Yellowstone, they had a great time.  Had Close Encounters with Moose and Bison.  Surprisingly, we haven’t seen many elk this time.

I feel much better today.  Got a bit of congestion left from the creeping crud but my cough is gone and the grogginess is all cleared up. 

10:30 p.m. - Whew!  Long drive today.  We spent longer than we planned on driving back through Yellowstone and just pulled into the KOA here at Devils Tower about 30 minutes ago.  This campground is literally at the base of Devils Tower.  It towers over the entire campground.  Nice campground - heated pool, spa, rec room, movie theatre (where they serve popcorn and show Close Encounters of the Third Kind every evening).  Too bad we paid for all of it and didn’t get here until the pool and spa and everything else was closed.  Speaking of campgrounds, a couple friends have emailed asking where we spent the last two nights on the lake by Yellowstone.  That was Yellowstone Holiday Cabins, RV Camping, and Marina located on Hebgen Lake about 15 miles outside of West Yellowstone.

Today, we drove from West Yellowstone through the park to the Northern Entrance at Gardiner and then headed north to pick up the interstate.  We saw lots of wildlife before we left the park including an Eagle on her nest (BIG nest!), some more bison and elk.  In fact, just as we were exiting the park near Gardiner, there were about 15 elk munching on the flowers in the median.  Here’s a picture of one of them.    We moved on through Wyoming and then hit the interstate and drove through Montana for several hours.  I love the grasslands in Montana.  I love to watch them when the wind blows and stirs the grasses like waves on the ocean.  It always amazes me that they don’t all bow in the same direction.  It’s like the wind currents are playing in the grass and the effect can be mesmerizing like watching the ocean.  We traveled through all the hills that were covered with yellow wildflowers so dense the entire landscape was yellow.  Finally, we dipped back down into Wyoming and continued to Devils Tower.  I’ll take some pictures of the tower in the morning.  I’ve been here before.  There’s not a whole lot to see but what there is is pretty phenomenal.   The tower is just so “out of place” you’ve got to wonder how it came to be here. 

Wish I had some kind of musical instrument so I could summon the UFO as k.t. suggested but all I have are some maracas I bought in Mexico for my granddaughter.  Do you think they’ll come?  I’ll go out in the moonlight and dance with the maracas and see if it works.  Let you know tomorrow.