We crossed the border from South Dakota with many of our new found Sturgis friends. Our first stop was Devil’s Tower. I wouldn’t say I have a “Richard Dreyfus- mashed-potato-like obsession” with Devil’s Tower, but I do find it fascinating. Many many years ago while driving east from Cody, I made my roadtrip companion drive hours out of the way on a really long day’s (and overnight’s) drive which began in Cody and ended in Detroit with a brief stop to tour the Miller Brewery in Milwaukee to check out Devil’s Tower. And while we experienced no Close Encounters of the Third Kind on that (or this) visit, I did (and do) find it fascinating.
We returned, with biker friends in tow, on a brilliant and hot summer’s day to briefly stare with awe at this remarkable stone tower. Legend has it that the marks on the side of the tower are those from the claws of a giant bear who had chased a group of young girls up the tower. The girls were then lifted to the sky to become the stars of the Pleiades. The tower is a butte which rises up 1,267 feet from the Belle Fourche River below. The Devils Tower National Monument was the first US national monument established in 1906 by President Teddy Roosevelt. The name derives from an 1875 misinterpretation of a native name for the tower (such as Bear’s Lair, Bear’s House or Bear’s Lodge) as “Bad God’s Tower”, but the new misinterpreted name stuck. It is now managed by the National Park Service.
We continued west, as our Sturgis friends turned east, back to the bike rally, on Wyoming’s highway 14 towards Sheridan. As you get out into the wilds and winds of rural Wyoming it isn’t too far-fetched to imagine how this area appeared both thousands and not so many hundred years ago when the American west was truly wild. Save for the telephone wires, county and state roads, a few farms and ranches and a few railroad tracks, these rolling golden hills, rugged mountains and endless array of buttes appear nearly untouched by human existence.
In Sheridan we stopped over for a night. Its Main Street has the feel of an old western town, with some newer amenities. Western sculptures line the sidewalks and street art evokes images of the old west. We stopped in for a beer at the Mint Bar, a friendly old school watering hole since 1907 with an impressive array of stuffed heads of animals who previously roamed these hills.
Then it was off to Yellowstone National Park. With each mile added since Sturgis now taking us further from our final destination: Denver. We took US 14 west up and over the Bighorn Mountains and through Bighorn National Forest. Fog had the summit of the first peaks socked in and slowed our progress to a crawl, but as we descended, we were immersed in some of the most spectacular scenery. High alpine turned to a rocky canyon with red cliffs and remarkable spires.
We returned to the plains and passed through Shell, Greybull and Cody, of Buffalo Bill fame, and then rose again through Buffalo Bill State Park and the Shoshone National Forest and were awestruck by the beauty of our surrounds. If you have a chance to take US Highway 14 between Sheridan and Yellowstone, do it. We regretted not having budgeted more time to pass this way more slowly.
As we climbed through the east side of Yellowstone, evidence of pine beetle devastation surrounded us. Felled trees lay vulnerable and those that stood appeared to be waiting for a lightning strike to clear them away. Having spent considerable time in the American West and a few years in Portugal, we’ve got a healthy respect for wildfires. But yet as one burned to our left as we passed by, its smoke leaving the depth of trees and mountain slopes more apparent, we made a brief stop to admire, and fear, nature at work.
We spent three days in Yellowstone Park, driving through it and exploring it. I was going to include our notes on Yellowstone in this post, but our visit to America’s land of ice and fire deserved its own post, which you can find here.
After our drive through Wyoming on US Highway 14, we determined to return, perhaps in early fall to experience the changing leaves, move more slowly from east to west and to drop down and spend some time near Grand Teton National Park and in one of our favorite places in Wyoming: Jackson Hole.
Sources:
The Traveling Ridleys 
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