A Devil of a time

Regarding this trip, I’ve deemed today, 30 August, National Monument Day because, after spending several hours wandering the Little Bighorn National Monument, the time had come to drive directly to another National Monument – Devils Tower. The suggested route from Google Maps along U S 212 would have, as is my preference, avoided the interstate. (Given the spottiness of my data connection, I’d begun using the Wi-Fi at the hotel to hand write the next day’s directions.) However, I’d seen some signs warning of possible road construction delays along that route. In addition, it was well after noon and finding a place to stop for lunch was another priority.

With this in mind, I stopped again at the Visitor’s Center and spoke to a Ranger. She was very familiar with the area and provided three useful bits of information. First, she said that the construction delays (and there were two) had been running as long as half an hour each. When I mentioned lunch, she told me that the interstate would be the better choice and noted that even without the construction, the time difference using the interstate was minimal. Since my goal was to reach Devils Tower and have time to hike the area before dinner at the B & B where I was staying, I chose the interstate route.

About 35 miles along the interstate, I reached this sign

which means that I have now (even if briefly) been to 49 of the 50 states in the U S A. If you’re curious, the answer to the first question people generally ask is: Hawai’i. The answer to the second is, no I haven’t visited all the states as extensively as I did Wyoming (see the map below) or any the four states I visited this summer. For example, I had lunch in Kansas City, Kansas while waiting to go to a baseball game in Kansas City, Missouri and while that’s my only Kansas experience, I can legitimately say I’ve been in Kansas. I’ve had similarly brief encounters in a few other states as well.

Please look again at the photo above. Under typical circumstances, I’d have used some sort of enhancer to brighten the colors but I want to share my experience with you and the haze you see will persist throughout the remainder of the trip. Often worse. Only rarely better.

Now that I’ve reached Wyoming, I will be making a reasonably thorough visit. The map is your guide for the coming week.

I began this morning in Billings, Montana, proceeded east to the Little Bighorn National Monument, then south and east to Devils Tower National Monument. Tomorrow, I’ll make the small loop on the east that includes Belle Fourche and Deadwood, South Dakota before spending the night in Sundance, Wyoming – which is labeled Interstate 90 on the map – and is less than 30 miles from where I’ll start the day at Devils Tower. From there, I’ll go south to Douglas and spend the night in Laramie. After Laramie, my next overnight stop is Jackson and Grand Teton National Park. I’ll make a day trip to Cody before spending several nights in Yellowstone National Park. From Yellowstone, I’ll return to Montana and will provide you with a new route map at that point in my narrative.

Devils Tower – What’s in a name?

I reached Devils Tower at about 15:30 as planned. I was excited about my stay at the Devils Tower Bed & Breakfast because if it isn’t technically on the National Monument grounds, it’s no more than half a mile as the crow flies from the tower and the Devils Tower Lodge’s website says that every suite has at least one room with a clear view of the tower. It was true but to find my view,

 I had to stand in the bathtub.

The owner, Frank Sanders, is originally from Maryland and is an interesting character about whom I’ll have more to write in due course. For now, I’ll simply describe him as contrarian and while we’d spoken on the phone, we’d never met. In one of those moments when you see a presumed stranger and immediately recognize him, I saw Frank when I was about two-thirds through my circuit of the tower and after he’d just completed his descent from scaling it with another of his guests.

We chatted for a few minutes and our conversation meandered from topic to topic as conversations often do before settling at some point on a discussion of the site’s name. The official story goes like this: Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, who led a U S Geological Survey expedition in 1875, bestowed the moniker Devils Tower on the site when he wrote in a book published in 1876, “The Indians call this shaft The Bad God’s Tower, a name adopted with proper modification, by our surveyors.” On this point, there is universal agreement. Here, at least in Frank’s eyes, the situation turns a bit murky.

You may recall that George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills in July of 1874. One of the geologists on that mission, Harry Newton, published a book in 1880 that states, “the name Bear Lodge (Mato Tipila) appears on the earliest map of the region, and though more recently it is said to be known among the Indians as ‘the bad god’s tower,’ or in better English, ‘the devil’s tower’…”. This seemed to confirm the assertion of the name Dodge made in his very popular book. The name took hold in the public’s imagination and consciousness and so it remains today.

According to Frank, who has read Dodge’s book, he doesn’t understand why the National Park Service so dislikes Dodge or his description because Frank believes this is the accurate one.  Frank told me tales, as I recall, of a Native American belief that a warrior killed in battle is, in the afterlife, destined to serve the one who killed him. Of course, such service can’t occur until the triumphant warrior dies. Thus, the spirit of the vanquished must linger someplace until the victor’s death and that Devils Tower is one such place. He also told me that Dodge had great fluency in the native languages of the area and would have likely provided an accurate translation.

Of course, throughout my travels, I’ve learned to maintain some skepticism about the assertions made by local guides and local people about their local turf because nearly everyone brings a usually unspoken agenda to what they tell you. Thus, I’ll take a bit of a closer look at some of Frank’s claims in A Devil of a time – Part 2.

Note: In keeping with my 2022-2023 reformation of the blog into shorter entries, backdated to maintain their sequence, any comments on this post might pertain to its new configuration. See the full explanation in the post Conventions and Conversions.