A Pandemic Roadtrip: Part 2 

The Tower, at a distance

Day two of the road trip had absolutely beautiful weather.  Slightly cooler than the day before, but still warm and a tad sticky.

I had camped out fairly close to Devil’s Tower, and actually had no real plans to stop.  In the end, the sight of that column of rock rising up from above the Belle Fourche River valley, was too tempting.

Devil’s Tower is a butte formed of igneous rock.  Known as the Bear’s Lodge locally, The Tower was the first national monument in the United States, established in 1906 by then President Theodore Roosevelt.

Devil’s Tower

The Tower rises 1267 feet above the Belle Fourche River, and is 867 feet from base to summit.  It’s an impressive sight, and I was not the only visitor to the monument.

The visitor’s center was closed.  The parking lot at the trailhead was full, although the overflow parking was not.  There was not one car in the parking lot with a Wyoming license plate; everyone was out of state.  There were a lot of RV’s trying to force their way into some sort of parking situation, and park workers tried valiantly to get them to park in RV parking.  So that part of the experience was no different than Pre-Covid.

There is a trail that runs around the Tower itself, that I had already trekked in the past. It was crowded, and confusion ran rampant.  Once again, park workers were doing their best to get people to social distance, but few people were paying any attention.  I decided to pass on that trail, and found a side track that no one else was on, just to stretch my legs.

Eventually, I had to get back on the road.  It didn’t take long to pick up the interstate again, and I was off for Montana.  Camping in the Lolo National Forest was the goal for the night.