Lake De Smet and Devil's Tower

7/24/23

The heat wave continues. We are going to stay at Lake De Smet to stay cool. The water is so clear you can see the bottom. Mia found an outcropping of rock in the lake that has fish swimming around it. She spent most of the day in the water chasing the fish around.

7/25/23

We are headed to Devil’s Tower National Monument today to meet our friends from Canada. It is a short drive, and we stopped in Gillett, WY to go shopping. After shopping We found a free dump station provided by the city. Just as we were finishing and packing up our hoses at the dump station, another camper showed up to use it. As I was closing the door to our camper, I saw the man pull the cap off of his sewer line, and an explosion of sewage came shooting out on him and the ground. The smell was horrendous. Kathy and I looked at each other, turned around, got into the truck, and left as quickly as possible. We had planned to eat lunch in Gillett, but we both lost our appetites. We pulled into the campground at Devil’s Tower just after 1;30, and found a campsite big enough for two campers, with beautiful views of the tower. Our Canadian friends arrived just after 5. Mia and Sequoia ran into each other’s arms. They were ecstatic. We all had dinner together and told stories of our separate adventures in meeting up on this trip. It was very good to be back with them.

7/26/23

All of us, except Margie, hiked from the campground up to the visitor’s center at the base of Devil’s Tower. Margie has injured her foot and couldn’t walk that far. Instead, she drove up to the visitor’s center and met us. From there we all hiked around the base of the tower. We saw a magpie, a marmot, and climbers on the side of the tower. Shannon and Margie had heard that the ponderosa pines around the tower smelled like sugar. We all tried and sure enough, they smelled delicious. There is even a sign at the visitor’s center about this phenomenon. After the hike around the base, Margie drove both of the children back down, while Shannon, Kathleen and I finished the Red Hill trail hike, which brought us back down to the campground. The trail had not been cut down, so for a good portion of the hike, we were walking through waist high grasses. We all performed thorough tick checks on ourselves after the hike. We tried to stay cool the rest of the day.