Starting West

 

Back when we were kicking around ideas for my wife's second week off over the summer, we began kicking around ideas to head west. Particularly, my wife, not natively born in America, wanted to see the "Rocky Mountains" from ground level. She has technically seem them in the southwest but I admit, that isn't the same as seeing them further north. We started talking about Montana but ended up deciding on Wyoming. I have been to Wyoming a number of times but mostly in my youth and certainly not since I have been married so I was looking forward to returning to some old sites as well as seeing some ones I have only seen in pictures such as Devils Tower seen above.

Wyoming is a big state and depending on where we were heading, we could go different ways. So we ended up choosing to go in a big circle and with Devils Tower being our first stop in the NE corner of Wyoming, we decided to head there via South Dakota. This effected us in two distinct manners.

The first:

Going through South Dakota on interstate 90 means I am within 20 miles of one of my most researched ancestors, my 4th great grandfather Joseph Chicken Sr. I have written a lot about him over the years and even visited his grave once before maybe 15 years earlier on another family trip. Since we were so close and my kids are now old enough to remember such things, I thought we would make another visit. However when we pulled into the small cemetery on a treeless hill overlooking Gann Valley where he lived, I couldn't find his tombstone. I was looking for a tall thin tombstone and walked clear through the cemetery twice without seeing it. For some reason, I got to thinking perhaps it had fallen over and then the plot above caught my eye, maybe 20 feet from my car door! It was the grave of my 4th great grandfather. (Note: Mary Jane is his second wife and not my 4th great grandmother.) Someone had thoughtfully preserved it by embedding it in concrete after it presumably fell over. Even better, they had taken the time to clean it. Last time, I could barely read it and had to squint and move my head around to decipher what it said. This time, it was very easy to read. 

The Second:

By sheer coincidence, our vacation was timed with opening weekend of Sturgis, the huge motorcycle rally in South Dakota. As a result of this, we had to stop short of Devils Tower by some 280 miles in order to secure a high priced motel room. Our plan had been to drive one long day and be considerably closer to Devils Tower so we could be there early before the parking lots filled up. That didn't work out. I should have taken a picture of the motel parking lot the next morning. There was our single mini van and a parking lot full of motorcycles or vehicles pulling trailers with motorcycles. We were definitely the odd family out!

Due to our location far away, we got up extremely early so we could make it to Devils Tower around 9 o'clock in the morning. We read that the parking lots are usually full by 10 a.m. resulting in sometimes hours of waiting and wanted to beat that. That research was largely accurate as most of the parking lot was full upon our arrival and by the time we left a couple hours later, they were full and people were either waiting or parking miles away down the mountain and riding a shuttle bus.

It turned out to be a beautiful day and though not alone, there weren't a lot of people at 9 a.m. who were opting to hike clear around the formation as we did. It was a nice hike and after all these years of seeing pictures of others, I can now finally gaze upon my own pictures of our visit to Devils Tower.