Day 18 – Billings, MT to Devil’s Tower to Custer State Park, South Dakota

Day 18 – Billings, MT to Devil’s Tower to Custer State Park, South Dakota

August 14, 2013

After showers and a breakfast, we got back on the road in Billings, Montana. Our drive today was long and much of it was on Interstate 90 across Montana. I tried to help drive more today and managed to exit around Sheridan, MT. We drove down the Main Street to try to find a market or grocery store for fresh bread. It was one of the larger towns we saw, but we did not find any food stores. A man outside an antique sign shop gave us directions to an Albertsons. Albertsons was another exit east and in the middle of the ugly sign filled urban sprawl part of Sheridan. We had our lunch on the road, heading east.

I drove to Devil’s Tower with Alle riding shotgun and helping navigate. Ricardo sat in back, playing with the boys and ultimately taking a nap. Afterwards, he said that he got more of a taste for being in the RV as a passenger, and “it’s awful”. It can be quite nauseating in back, especially on hills when there is a gas smell coming in from the exhaust. Peter and Ricardo slept, while Ted built different magnetic cars with one of the new games I had brought for the trip.

We loved Devil’s Tower, a National Monument in the northeastern corner of Montana. It rises up from the land and we caught glimpses of it as we made turns in the small roads leading to it. There is nothing really around the huge monolithic tower of rock and it is not on the way to anywhere. One has to just want to see it and find it in the countryside. The tower is a sacred site for many of the Native America Indian groups from this area. One of the legends about it tells of a family of seven daughters and one son. The son turns into a large bear and hunts his sisters. The women go to the top of the land, which rises up to protect them. The bear scratches the sides of the tower, giving it large groves in the sides, which today aid the many rock climbers who try to scale it. The area around the tower is kept natural and it is a lovely site.

From Devil’s Tower, we took smaller roads heading south and east into South Dakota. Unfortunately, the migraine headache which had been chasing me for the past two nights came on with a vengeance. I ended the day, groaning in the back of the RV as Ricardo navigated in heavy rain to Custer State Park, a bit east of Custer City, SD. We are in the Legion Lake campground for the next two nights.  Here is Legion Lake of the Black Hills, SD.

I made dinner for the gang around 8 pm and went to bed. At about midnight, I woke from snoring around me and moved to sleep above the driving area with Alle. I woke up Alle because I thought she was sleeping downhill. So, we went outside to check and see the stars. Out here without much civilization around us, the stars are so vibrant and bright. We noticed that the RV was downhill on one side and went in and shifted our beds. About two hours later, another thunderstorm blew through and I felt a bit of rain. One of the other features of this dilapidated RV is that the sunlight above Alle’s space is stuck open.  It started to pour in on us and I lept up and woke up Alle again. We succeeded in taping plastic grocery bags over the opening and went back to sleep. The adventure continues.