Through Wild Wild West to Devil's Tower

After four days full of colors in Yellowstone it was time to move on. We're slowly heading back towards Chicago, we have a few extra weeks left but also we have an idea what to do with those weeks. We'll reveal it soon. Now our plan was to leave Yellowstone and go straight to Chicago taking a quick look at the main attraction of South Dakota (yes, ladies and gentleman, South Dakota exists and it has some attractions).

Last day in Yellowstone we left Eddie at a parking lot and after a day of intensive sightseeing we left at 7 pm (we planned to leave two hours earlier but if you read this blog regularly you know what it's like with us leaving places we enjoy). But we finally left. As as we hadn't had any internet for a few days  this was what our plan looked like: we would leave the park, after an hour or two drive we would for sure catch some 4G (or at least edge) and on freecampsites.net for sure we would find a free campsite near Cody which was the first town on our route.

Earlier that day we took a look at the map and we realized that getting to South Dakota wouldn't be as easy as we thought. It's not that far - from Cody to  Rapid City it's only 390 miles. Problem is that Cody lies in the valley 5000 feet above the sea level. It's separated from South Dakota by the mountains - each road was crossing them at more than 9000 feet. We didn't realize at all that leaving Yellowstone we are not leaving The Rockeis and we still have one more mountain range in front of us - Bighorn Mountains.

They just rise up after Cody going up 4000 feet in a really short distance. We're not that tough. We decided to take further way, the old way, the longest way to be precise - "20" - and not to override our car and our nerves.

We left Yellowstone already driving on "20". We did see it once before on Oregon coast in Newport, driving  "101" north. We found out back then that it's the longest road in the US. Zero in the name says it goes from coast to coast. It's almost 3500 miles long and on our trip in the US we probably found ourselves on that road like five or six times. That day we did just a bit over 160 miles.

Going "20" east we were thanking God we didn't even think of taking this road to get to Yellowstone - we would have to go up some 30 miles on a very steep road, and going down we were just trying to nose out whether our brakes are burning yet, going on 2nd gear most of the time. We went down from 8523 feet above sea level (Sylvan Pass in Yellowstone) and after those more or less 30 miles we were at 5725 feet. Maybe it doesn't sound that dramatic but there are some really difficult part with downhill grade exceeding 10 percent.

Road through the park is very picturesque. Outside the park probably too, but we can only suspect, as it got dark, and all we could see were shapes. But there defenietly were something to see as we found ourselfes close to an apocaliptic thunderstorm. No Thunders, no rain, only the lightenings all around us showing scary contours of mountains. It was so unreal that when we got to dam by Buffalo Bill reservoir and we entered a long tunnel carved in rock we both felt as if we were going to the center of Earth or even straight to hell... The feeling stayed with us after we left the tunnel too, as the lightenings still raged over the area.

But we were still in the same universe and not much later, around 10 pm we got to center of Cody, set up at the turn of the century by Buffalo Bill, who could see in this fertile area on the road to Yellowstone a good deal. We didn't get tempted to stay. There are some cheap campgrounds in town but after Yellowstone we wanted to go back to free camping as soon as possible. We still didn't have any cell coverage so we stopped at Wendy's parking lot for wifi. Quick look at freecampsites.net made us realize that we had a long night ahead…

So, late at night, stocked at gas station in energizers and chocolate bars, seeing nothing but shadows and signs knocked down by the wind we headed to Riverton which was 140 miles away… We kept going on historic "20", which, just like us, decided to go around high peaks (Cloud Peak is 13 000 feet) of Bighorn mountain range.

We drove some 50 miles leaving the storm behind and we saw a parking by information center (the only information we found there was about many rattlesnakes in the area) with toilets and picnic tables. There was "No overnight camping" sign but after all camping and parking is not the same, right? Besides it was almost midnight, windy as hell, and there was already a C-class parking there. So we parked next to it, set up alarm clock for 7 am and we went to sleep hoping nobody would knock on our door at night. To make us feel more comfortable two trucks joined us after midnight. At least we won't be the only ones paying the ticket.

Luckily we didn't, nobody knocked. We still don't know if is it legal in Wyoming to stay overnight on those parkings or not. State doesn't seem to know either and we found some sources saying that there are no statewide regulations governing this matter. We didn't really want to have this discussion so we quickly got up and before 8 am (!) we went on through green hills of Wyoming. We kept following "20", but we wanted to head north soon to go on interstate "90", and take it all the way to Chicago.

We stopped for coffee and internet in McDonald's (there was nothing else...) in town called Thermopolis. For a second there we hoped we'd sell the trailer, because an interested buyer called, but we didn't agree on the price. We thought of staying in town few hours to take a bath in hot springs but we had a long way to go. So we went on "20" which passes Thermopolis going in a canyon carved by Bighorn River.

Then it got a little more monotonous - grassy hills stretching to the horizon with cows, sheeps or oil facilities as the only diversion. Out of those we definitely prefer oil facilities, and it is not a matter of sentiment, rather a matter of smell. Wyoming is after all perhaps the most cowboy state, at least this seems to be the marketing idea. Even around Cody, where Buffalo Bill had his ranch with more than 1,000 head of cattle, he'd still make money on tourists seeking cowboy experience. However, we are not at all attracted. Cows mean first of all flies and smell. Therefore we crossed central Wyoming as quickly as chief Grand Cherokee allowed us.

Greetings to our janzour colleagues working hard in Libya

We drove and drove and drove and drove...and at last around 7 pm we got to Devil’s Tower, not far from South Dakota border. We wanted just to take a quick look and a few pics and go on, but place known from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" charmed us so much that we decided to stay there overnight, especially that we still didn't find any free camping and the one in Devil's Tower State Park was the cheapest one in the area. We felt a sleep pretty easy in the shadow of Devil's Tower hoping that we won't get abducted by aliens...