A Dreamy Day Featuring The Devil

Hey, it’s the sun!

When I woke-up this morning, I felt a bit nervous. Nothing I saw from the previous day gave me any solid reason to believe that the forecast would hold true and that the weather would turn in my favor. Then, I noticed the change in the type of light coming through the edges of the closed drapes. Upon opening them, a wave of relief washed over me. The sky was clearing and the sun was rising!

While the sun was rising, it was still particularly cold and the wind was wicked coming out of the east. My room faced the west, so it was protected from the wind, but I got the full force of it when I turned the corner of the building so I could shoot some video and photos of the landscape with the sunrise.

As I was documenting the morning, I felt a growing sense of anxiety and/or excitement inside me. Part of me was yelling at me to get my ass on the road as soon as possible, so that the weather didn’t turn on me again, even though that didn’t look possible. Another part of me was yelling at me to get my ass on the road as soon as possible, simply because it wanted to start seeing all the things I wanted to see on this trip. Regardless of which argument was stronger, the result was my packing my car more quickly than I thought possible and in-fact getting my ass on the road immediately.

The Plan

The plan for the day started with driving the Badlands Loop from the Ben Reifel Visitor Center entrance to Scenic, South Dakota. From Scenic, I’d make my way up to Rapid City and the into Black Hills National Forest. Once I was in the Black Hills, I’d visit Mount Rushmore, followed by the Crazy Horse Memorial and then up to the city of Deadwood. The final event of the day would be driving west into Wyoming and finally visiting Devils Tower National Monument in person. After all that, I’d make my way down to a motel room Bill, Wyoming, to decompress.

Badlands National Park

The drive through Badlands National Park (BNP) was beautiful. Most of the clouds had blown to the south and the early morning sun cast deep shadows throughout the landscape and revealed there was actually an abundance of color everywhere, something that was hidden during the previous overcast day. In order to avoid catching a reflection on my GoPro, I had to keep the driver’s side window open which made the drive a cold one, but it was worth it. It also seemed like I stopped every two miles to shoot pictures on on DSLR, especially in the Yellow Mounds area of the park. The mounds were the first thing on the trip to really blow my mind. Seeing them coming-up through the ground, bright yellow, some topped in white and in places surrounded by lush, green grass, made me feel like I was in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It was fantastic.

Then, the unexpected happened. After passing Pinnacles Overlook, the road took a right and I was leaving the park. “So soon?” I wondered. My plan for the day allotted more time for the drive through BNP, but I thought I must’ve been mistaken and had my phone set a course for Scenic. About 10 minutes later, I arrived at Wall, South Dakota, and my phone started telling me to get on Route 90, which I knew wasn’t what I’d planned to do because I’d been looking forward to avoiding major highways for the most part that day.

After some investigating, I realized that I’d left BNP prematurely and only driven through half the Badlands Loop. The better part of me wasn’t standing for it, so I turned around and headed back to BNP. This was fortunate, at the very least, because when I arrived at the entrance I finally got to use my interagency pass and received the brochure and pamphlet for the park. Upon asking the park ranger about the road, I discovered that I hadn’t accidentally left the road prematurely and that the Sage Creek Rim Road (an unpaved road that comprises the rest of the trip to Scenic) was closed.

Instead of turning around, I decided to head back to the Pinnacles Overlook and shoot some video and photographs, figuring I was going to be ahead of schedule at this point. (On the way there, I noticed the gates that closed Sage Creek Rim Road. When I passed them the first time, I thought it was a side road.) When I arrived at Pinnacles Overlook, I set up my GoPro and shot some panoramas and then panic set-in.

Technological Disaster?!?

While I attempted to turn the GoPro off, the screen flashed an error message telling me that the memory card wasn’t formatted correctly. What… the… fuck?!? All I could think of was that all the footage I’d shot along the way was gone. So I jumped in my car, pulled-out my entire rig and started downloading what I had from the memory card directly to my external hard drives. Luckily, my footage was all there and this was just my first experience with the GoPro being a big buggy. Unfortunately, I ended-up spending an entire hour at the overlook waiting for everything to finish, so I ultimately ended-up behind schedule. But, hey… shit happens, right? Before I knew it, I was on Route 90 heading west towards Black Hills National Forest (BHNF).

Mount Rushmore National Monument

The first stop in BHNP was Mount Rushmore National Monument. While planning the trip, visiting Mount Rushmore felt more like an obligation than anything else. Visiting the Crazy Horse Memorial was something I actually looked forward to. What I mean is that if I only had the chance to see one, I would’ve chosen Crazy Horse. Regardless, my route took me past Mount Rushmore on the way to Crazy Horse, so I’m just wasting your time here.

It turns-out that I found seeing Mount Rushmore in-person to be a thrilling experience. It was the first time on my trip that I truly appreciated the fact that pictures and movies, regardless of their quality and resolution, cannot compare in the slightest way to seeing something in-person. There’s the context of seeing something in-person and I also believe there’s an undeniable energy from the environment as well. The sculpture also turned-out to be a lot smaller than I expected it to be in its setting and the snowfall from the previous evening had left the surrounding trees nicely dusted. After shooting a few videos and tracking-down my collector’s pin from the gift shop, I was on my way to the next stop.

Crazy Horse Memorial

Crazy Horse Memorial is massive. It’s so massive in-fact that I have my doubts that it will be finished in my lifetime. The visitors center was impressive, amounting to a museum dedicated to Native American artwork and history, but also containing a restaurant, gift shop and movie theater. The viewing area was a surprising distance away from the sculpture itself. While it’s so big that you don’t have to get as close to it as Mount Rushmore, I still would’ve liked a closer view. Again, after shooting a few videos and snagging a pin and a few postcards from the gift shop, I was off again!

Deadwood

The drive from Crazy Horse up to Deadwood was a beautiful one. There was still a bit of snow on the ground and trees along the way, which wasn’t anything I’d expected to get to see. My decision to visit Deadwood was based-on my having decided to watch the HBO series in the month leading-up to the trip. It was also a matter of convenience because from Crazy Horse there were two routes to Devils Tower and they both took the same amount of time, so I figured I’d take the scenic route through the forest and see a historic city.

Ultimately, Deadwood wasn’t all that interesting to me. After finding a place to park, I decided to simply walk up and down the main drag, so I could check it out and say that I’d done it. It turned-out to be casinos, bars and souvenir shops. It kind of felt like visiting Put-In-Bay on South Bass Island when I was a kid, now that I think about it. On the way out, I dipped down into a shop, found a nice pin and a few postcards. Then, I was really on my way because I was headed to the destination that the entire trip was based-upon visiting: Devils Tower National Monument.

Devils Tower National Monument

The drive from Deadwood to Devils Tower was a little over an hour and as every minute passed I became more and more excited. Ever since I first saw the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I’d wanted to see it in-person. If I had a bucket list, this would’ve been near the top of it.

Unlike the reveal in the movie, the tower is visible from quite a long distance away. Instead of taking away from the experience, it only made it more exciting for me watching it slowly but surely get closer of the course of the 20 minute drive to the entrance to the park. Along the way, I made a few stops to take photographs and even a selfie. It was one of the top five happiest moments of my life and I didn’t feel ashamed capturing the expression on my face.

By the time I passed the entrance and made my way up to the visitors center parking lot, it was about 4:30 PM so I figured I still had about two hours of daylight. After grabbing my souvenirs at the gift shop, I geared-up and headed-out on the first of two trails.

The Red Beds Trail is a little under three miles long and makes a wide berth around the base of Devils Tower. The coolest part for me was getting to see the tower from every angle. It wasn’t until then that I realized that it’s not symmetrical with it’s back side in-fact sort of rounding up to the top giving it a lopsided appearance. Another nice part of the trail was the lack of other hikers, and the side opposite from the visitors center was the quietest place I’d ever experienced in my life, up to that point.

Red Beds Trail only took a little over an hour for me to finish, so I decided to immediately jump onto the Tower Trail, which runs directly around the base of the tower. The Tower Trail is only about a mile in length and is paved, making it easily accessible to anyone. That being the case, I still didn’t run into anyone once I got past the first area near the entrance. Along the way, I spotted some climbers, which made me dizzy just seeing them climbing up the side of the tower, and sent many texts to friend featuring me making the devils horns gesture with my hand because that’s radical.

As I wrapped-up and got my car back in order, I began to feel a bit melancholic. Factually speaking, I could’ve camped in the campground that night, so I felt bad leaving, but I also wanted to be on my way. After shooting some final panoramas of the tower with the sun setting in the background, I was back on the road and headed for my motel room.

The Void

Today, I learned that it’s better to take your time and look around a bit when you’re out traveling. And, that lesson came with a note that you’d better pad your schedule to accommodate the approach. After all the stops throughout the day, I found myself about two hours behind schedule with about a two hour drive to my motel.

The beginning of the drive was wondrous. The sun was setting as I left Devils Tower and the drive to Gilette didn’t have much of anything between it. The combination of it all gave me the impression of being the last human on the face of the planet watching the last sunset as I raced to find cover before an endless night.

A memorable moment happened when I arrived at Keyhole Reservoir past Carlile, Wyoming. As I turned a corner, I encountered the first truly straight and level stretch of road that extended into the horizon. One of the things I’d wanted to do on the trip is see how fast I could get my GTI going on some back road, and I immediately recognized this as the moment I’d imagined.

Well, just as I hit the gas, I noticed movement off to the left side of the road and when I turned to look I saw a massive herd of dear or antelope there. Given the fact that I’d just had a wonderful day and didn’t really want to risk sitting on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in a smashed car, I let up on the accelerator and sat back to enjoy the rest of the drive like an old man.

By the time I got to Gilette and turned south, the sun had set and there were only remnants of light in the sky. The road also turned into a non-divided, two lane highway that didn’t do much but go straight ahead. This combined with a 13-hour day at that point to make me super anxious to get to my motel room and relax a bit. After an hour of semi-trucks blasting by me in the dark without my being able to really see where the lanes were, knowing there was nothing but probably deer and antelope roaming around, I was ready for a couple of beers and sleep.

Bill, Wyoming

It was an anxious time when my navigation system told me that my destination was just ahead and I couldn’t see anything in the distance. If something was off, I was going to have a really hard time dealing with any more driving. Sure enough, there is in-fact a motel in a city called Bill, Wyoming, but I don’t think it’s a city at all, just a motel.

The receptionist was also the hostess of a greasy spoon diner attached to the front of the rather large motel. They put me on the second floor and I parked around back in a dirt lot which got me as close as I could to my room, “close” being a relative term here as it felt like a quarter-mile round trip to my room and back, which I had to make about five times in order to get all of my stuff to the room.

The motel itself was full of smoke and dogs, which I could hear through the walls. It was all a minor annoyance though. The rest of the evening was spent downloading, organizing and backing-up all of the media I’d captured during the night. Then I finished watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with a new appreciation for the ending, before passing-out from exhaustion.