Sundance, WY

It was about 8:15 by the time we left Cody yesterday. It could have been a half hour earlier except people kept walking up to us to say final goodbyes which was nice. The trip was great and took us through the southern part of the beautiful Bighorn Mountains before we picked up I-90 in Buffalo, WY. From there it was straight, flat and open land. We arrived at Sundance at 3 PM (total of 312 miles) and decided to do the Devils Tower Monument since we still had some time and it was only 20 miles from our campground. It would also free up some extra time over the next day and a half to see more of the Black Hills attractions. The Devils Tower Monument was an incredible attraction. We could first see this unusual formation from miles away as we approached the Park:

(Note - This entry is late as a result of an unexplained software problem which does not allow the images to be downloaded. I am researching the problem and will make sure these images are properly added after I find and repair the problem. Meanwhile, the image locations will be noted with whatever you are seeing above.)

The appearance of this rock formation is that of columns, all together in a tight group. The "columns" have been falling away from the huge formation over the last several million years, creating the sea of boulders seen all around the formation:

We took the 1.3 mile trail around the whole formation and the different views were amazing. The boulder field was evident around the entire formation and I took this shot of Josie standing among the boulders in front of the Tower:

As we walked around to the back side, we saw 4 climbers on the face of the Tower. We were able to get this shot of the 2 climbers that were about half way up:

The other 2 climbers were near the top and weren't as clear in the photos.We were glad that we decided to see the Tower Monument last night as that freed up our morning today to travel to our new location in Sturgis, SD - 55 miles away - and take the loop road around the Spearfish Canyon and then visit the city of Deadwood.

We arrived back at the fifth wheel around 8:30 PM last night and turned in pretty early in order to get a head start on today. Today was a very exciting day that will be reviewed tomorrow. -----I believe I found the software problem (it's almost midnight), so tomorrow's entry should be normal. Until then...