Devil's Tower National Monument, Wyoming

We pack up and leave the 7th Ranch RV Park and drive several hours through the prairies of Montana. We pass lots and lots and lots of pronghorn antelope in the fields beside the road. We drive through Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservations on our way to Devils Towner, Wyoming.

One section of our drive has fields of blue wildflowers beside the road. Very pretty.

We set up at the Devils Tower KOA and head over to Devils Tower National Monument. As we drive into the monument we first past "prairie dog town". Lots of prairie dogs on both sides of the street.

We visit the visitors center/museum and then hike around the bottom of Devils Tower.

We have a nice relaxing walk til we come upon two guys who tell us that there's a rattlesnake just off the trail. There are lots of signs to warn hikers to beware of rattlesnakes, but I honestly didn't think we'd see any considering all of the people on the trail. We watch the 5 foot long snake until it starts heading in our directions, and then I walk away. Joe looks at the snake through the binoculars and doesn't see any rattles on the end, so we're not sure what kind of snake it is, but I'm a little freaked out that it seems to be unafraid of people and heading in our direction.

We finish our walk around the base of the mountain and head back to the campground for a swim in the pool. We come back from the pool and watch two busloads of high school students from Michigan set up many, many tents behind us. I guess they're on some sort of field trip. It's interesting, they even have their own kitchen set up, complete with tables & benches.

We were hoping to watch the movie, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (which has several scenes at Devils Monument) in the evening. Unfortunately we have some thunderstorms come through the area and the movie, which is shown outside at the campground every night, is cancelled tonight :-(