I did not find my camera while sleeping so the first thing on the to do list was to find a “Super” Walmart that would be able to take care of my needs. I packed up the room and we shoved off from Keystone and started heading for our next destination.
Before hitting up Walmart we planned on stopping in Deadwood to pay our respects to Wild Bill and this is exactly what we did….nothing too dramatic happened while visiting Deadwood but its worth mentioning that no one got shot.
We hit the road again and after about 2 hours of driving, I started to see a large glowing light in the sky and knew we were approaching the Super Walmart. As we got closer I noticed the light in the sky was really just the sun but this didn’t take away from our enthusiasm as we entered a parking lot that had anywhere from 40 to 4,000 cars in it. I had never seen such a behemoth of a store and told my companions to keep their heads down as we made our way to the counter. I refused to get the exact same camera so I decided to get the same model in a very hip navy blue color and I immediately felt 10 years younger. We decided to try some of the local fare for lunch so we headed over to a nearby Applebees where I was able to grab my first picture with the new camera.
After lunch we continued on our way to the next monument, known all over the universe as Devils Tower. As we got closer the odd shaped tower suddenly sprung up before us and after stopping for a few pictures we headed into the park.
As we circled around the tower, I started having flash backs of my close encounter of the 3rd kind, and consequently kept a close eye out for any UFO’s, but the coast seemed to be as clear as the sky. We were able to get pretty close to the tower before being forced to abandon our car to the elements and continue forward on foot.
As we approached the base, I noticed the rock faces seemed to be swarming with what looked like ants…..but as my eyes adjusted to reality I saw that they were actually many different groups of rock climbers attempting to scale the tower. There is a nice trail that loops all the way around so we set off along this to catch the 360 degrees of different views that were offered to us free of charge.
The back side is really cool because you can just close your eyes and listen to the sounds of the forest…and the occasional scream from the rock climbers.
After hiking around, we hit the gift shop and headed back onto the road for some scenic driving before arriving in Sheridan. Nothing historical or touristy in Sheridan but it was the right distance to take a break from driving for the night. Had dinner in a nice steak house and called it a night.