A Close Encounter at Devils Tower

Spearhead Valley

We spent the night at the Whispering Pines RV park in Spearhead Valley. The valley looks like the Sierra Nevadas in California. I was surprised, I felt like I was back in California. I didn’t expect to see such a pretty valley in South Dakota. When we were driving we stopped and looked at a pretty waterfall along the road. It was named Bridel Veil falls like the one in Yosemite.

Devils Tower is a huge volcanic plug in Northeastern Wyoming. When I first saw it I thought WOW! It was formed by Magma pushing up from the center of the earth about 50 Million years ago. It came up and filled a space in sedimentary rocks and then cooled. As it cooled it fractured into columns. Over millions of years erosion of the sedimentary rocks exposed Devils Tower. It is like Morro Rock in California. It is 867 feet from its base to its summit. It’s not flat on top but rounded.

The Indians called it bear tepee and it was sacred site. Even today Native Americans put prayer cloths on trees in ceremonies.

We walked around it and it looked different all the way around. We also saw many people climbing the tower. It looked really hard to me. While we were there we saw one guy make it to the top; that was cool.

As we were leaving we saw a Priarie Dog preserve. There were lots of prairie dogs all around us. It made me feel big in the land of prairie dogs! There used to be a lot of praire dogs in the US but now there are only about 2 percent of them left. They were cute.


Wyoming is the home of many firsts:
1st US President to have been a park ranger, Gerald Ford
1st female governor
1st public library
1st National Park, Yellowstone
1st National Monument, Devils Tower


Belle Fourche, South Dakota, is the geographic center of the US. In 1959, the government named it the center after Alaska and Hawaii became states. Surrounding the round memorial were all the flags of the US. I thought it was really cool being at the center of the country.

Leaving one Dakota and entering another
Medora, North Dakota

We spent the night in a RV park across from the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It must be really cool to live next such a beautiful national park. The park was named for Roosevelt because he famously said he would not have been president if he had not spent time in North Dakota. He first arrived in 1883 to shoot some buffalo. He spent about one and a half years there total mostly in 1886.

The town of Medora was founded in April of 1883 by a 24 year old French nobleman, named the Marquis de Mores. There was a former military camp that was abandoned. He wanted to start a town and a meat packing plant. He had the financial backing of his father-in-law from New York. He named the town after his wife, Medora. His business failed. He returned to France with his wife. The town is small but beautiful. The Marquis summer home is still there and can be toured in the summertime.


Medora is also home to the Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Today's Total Mileage -367
Today's Route