Sheridan to Devil's Tower

Well, blog fans, time to find out whether we had a major mishap. Here is what the tent looked like when we got back from Keystone:

I tore open the door and found that everything was: DRY!

There was much rejoicing, and praise for REI. I really expected things to be pretty wet. There was a little dampness on one side, but that may have been from spilling the water bottle. Everything was totally dry, not even damp, and we both slept well.

Since this was our first camping stop since the change to mountain daylight time, we were up especially early. Checkout wasn't until 1 PM, so we decided to have breakfast and do some wifi and sightseeing before packing up. This would allow the tent to dry out a bit. Here's the valley as we searched for a restaurant that was open at 6 AM.

We found this great place in Hill City, SD. After a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and toast, we did major blog updating, etc.

Then it was off to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse.

Here's the front of Rushmore.

We also visited the Crazy Horse monument. They wanted us to pay $20 for admission, and the thing isn't even finished yet. We got a good view from outside the paid area, though, and here's a shot taken seconds after a huge blast that was part of the sculpting.

This whole area (Black Hills) is a bit of a Disneyland tourist place, with reptile gardens, mystery spots, caves, and 5,342 gift shops.

Back at the campsite we put the tent into it's drying-out configuration.

This was an interesting bird, with an interesting call. Identification?

Then we pushed on to Wyoming, and decided to stop at Devil's Tower National Monument. Here's Lena working on her pointing skills.

We didn't even know that they had a campground there, and when we checked it out, we found it was uncrowded, and very pleasant. Our site was secluded, and had a nice view of the tower.

Here I am putting the second coat of waterproofing liquid on the tent fly.

As soon as that was done, we hopped on our bikes to ride up to the visitor's center. It was only a few miles away, but a good climb, and a workout because we only had fifteen minutes to closing.

We made it with minutes to spare (only to find out that it would actually be open a few more hours).

Take a look at this shot. Can you spot the climbers?
Here's a magnified view of that same photo, showing the two climbers.
The average time to climb the tower is 4 hours. There is only one person who has done it without ropes, and he did it in 18 minutes!

There was a good prairie dog town down below the tower.

Back at the campsite, we had a great chicken-apple sausage meal cooked over charcoal.


And had a great sleep.

Stay tuned for a major change in elevation and temperature.