From Devils Tower, Wyoming

Devils Tower National Monument – After breakfast I went into Laramie with John Nelson to pick up his delivery of 25 baby chicks at the post office.  I had a nice tour of the University of Wyoming campus and downtown Laramie before taking the chicks home.  We had fun picking them up and trying to identify them from the catalog photos.  Rita wanted to stay and play with the chicks but we had to get on the road.

We drove east to Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming, and stopped at the Luxury Diner where we planned a rendezvous with Rachel and Deana.  They had arrived in Colorado last week and had spent several days in the Rocky Mountain National Park hiking the trails there.  After a nice lunch we drove through Cheyenne viewing the capital building and the Frontier Days arena before getting on I-25 north.  Rachel drove their car in the lead and we followed.

The scenery is nice but gets monotonous as it is all rolling prairie and no trees or much of anything but grass and cattle.  But the highway was nice, we could set the cruise control on 80 mph and I averaged 35 mpg on this leg of the trip.  Gasoline is cheap in Wyoming, too, because they have very little tax on it.  We passed through Chugwater and Wheatland and at Douglas we exited onto highway 59 through more rolling prairies with lots of antelopes.  We saw lots of trains pulling dozens of cars loaded with coal and we saw many coal mines as well.  We finally arrived in the town of Gillette which bills itself as the “energy center of the nation”.  I think Houston would argue with them on that.

In Gillette we headed east on I-90 to Moorcraft where we took highways 14 and 24 to Lytle Creek Inn Bed and Breakfast where we checked into our nice rooms.  We piled into Rachel’s rental car and drove to the Devils Tower National Monument, the first National Monument created under Teddy Roosevelt.  So Wyoming has the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone, and the first national monument.

Near the entrance to Devils Tower we stopped to watch and photograph the hundreds of prairie dogs that live in a large prairie dog town.  They made us laugh with their antics of standing guard on their hind legs and then chattering loudly as we got out of the car.  We continued on to the park visitor center and after a short while there we did the 1.3 mile hike around the base of the outcrop.  The sun was setting and we snapped up several photos from several angles.  It is an amazing sight rising over 800 feet straight up from the surrounding terrain.  

As it became darker we headed to the town of Hulett where we had a nice dinner at the Ponderosa Café.  I enjoyed my bison burger and Devils Tower lager.  But now it’s time for bed after a long day’s drive.