Close Encounters of the Monumental Kind

The Trip – Day 18

Dubois, Wyoming – Gillette, Wyoming

393 miles

and

The Trip – Day 19 Part 1

Gillette, Wyoming – Rapid City, South Dakota

Devils Tower, Mt. Rushmore

170 miles 

The day after the Grand Tetons' park trip we traveled from Dubois, through Casper, to Gillette, a gradual downhill drive from the Rockies toward the high plains with the accompanying scenery changing along the way. Wyoming is the least populated state in the country, having less than 600,000 people in an area of over 97,000 square miles. Much of the part we traveled through on Day 18 was Indian reservation or open ranch land, dotted with cattle and antelope. I loved the wide open, hilly feel of the state, and even the ever-present gun shops and constant Second Amendment chatter on talk radio did little to detract from, and probably added to, Wyoming's western beauty.

Driving through Wyoming

In the initial planning of the trip we were to travel this day from Dubois, Wyoming, to Rapid City, South Dakota, where we would spend the night before visiting the Badlands. This would be a 500+ mile day, breaking the 300 mile per day average rule by quite a bit. When I regained my sanity, I booked a hotel for Gillette, Wyoming, still giving us a 300+ mile day, but also allowing a low mileage day after that as well as some flex time for a surprise adventure. My husband had seen a brochure for Devils Tower National Monument sometime during our Wyoming travels and asked if we were passing anywhere near it. I didn't know – it hadn't even been on our long list of parks to visit (though it is technically a national monument and not a park). I looked up the location of Devils Tower and found it to be a short detour off Interstate 90 between Gillette and Rapid City. We decided to leave Gillette early the following morning and make Devils Tower our surprise adventure for the first part of the day, though I suspected I would be dealing with a movie-obsessed husband for much of it. One of my husband's quirks is that he has

Could have been dinner the night before...

the ability to fully enter (Forever!) into the world of any movie that strikes his fancy. (Just ask the kids whom he delights with his dead-on imitation of Darth Vader, kids whose parents weren't even born when my husband first saw Star Wars...) Devils Tower played a prominent role in the plot of the 1977 Steven Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The night before we were to go to Devils Tower, my husband asked if we could go to a restaurant that served mashed potatoes – lots of 'em – wanting to reenact a scene from the movie. We didn't. He didn't...

Smokey valley or potential alien landing field?

Native American depiction of the tower's formation

There had been wildfires a short distance from Devils Tower* the day before, closing the interstate during the night. I checked the fire status the morning of Day 19 and found the fire mostly contained, so we found ourselves on a somewhat smokey road off the interstate on our way to the tower. The 800+ foot butte could be seen from the distance as we approached. The unique striped and cracked shape of the tower is believed to be the remains of an ancient volcano, the earthen outside of the volcano long ago eroded, leaving only the hardened lava interior. The native American explanation for the vertical crevassed sides involves the climbing of the tower by a huge bear, the stripes around the tower left by its sharp claws. The “park” itself is relatively small, consisting of two concentric main trails, a 1.3 mile one around the base of the tower and a 3+ mile one that could be made longer with some side trails. We had only planned to be here for the morning, so we took the shorter trail around the base, I to get closer views of the tower, my husband to locate the route Roy (Richard Dreyfuss) and Jillian (Melinda Dillon) took in search of aliens. The trail was easy and pleasant, mostly level, mostly paved, and mostly treed. The outside views were of the surrounding valley, slightly hazy with smoke today, and the inside view was of the rocky base of the tower rising to its stripey vertical heights. My husband didn't know where to look first. Was that valley view where the landing pad for the Close Encounters space ship was located? That particular pile of rocks at the base surely must be where Roy and Jillian climbed up to escape the helicopters. Or maybe it was those rocks over there... I could tell it was going to be a long morning.

"Roy and Jillian were here!"

It was a beautiful morning, though. Each side of the tower is different, changing shape as one hikes around it. Being early in the day, the sun would backlight the tower on one side, illuminate it on another. There were deer and prairie dogs and other wildlife in the area including one large extremely photogenic snake. A fellow hiker put his GoPro on the ground a few feet from the snake, and the snake slithered right up to it and passed slowly in front of it like he had been in similar photo ops many times before. We heard voices in the air and looked up to see climbers on the tower, and though far away, the walls of the tower amplified their voices. We took shots of them with the paparazzi zoom and found seven climbers on that section of the tower. 

A very photogenic snake

Three of the climbers

Devils Tower is a popular place for rock climbers. In 1893, a local rancher was the first to climb the tower, constructing a 350 foot ladder of wood, anchored into one of the vertical cracks of the tower. It was used by others for subsequent climbs, and parts of it are still visible today, still wedged into the crevasse. The tower is also a sacred place for native Americans, and some consider climbing the tower disrespectful to their sacred site. There is a

Prayer cloths and prayer bundles

voluntary ban on climbing during the month of June, a time of special traditional tribal ceremonies. Most climbing guides in the area respect this ban, but the climbers we saw the day we were there were either oblivious to the ban or chose to ignore it. There were many tribal prayer bundles and prayer cloths attached to branches of the trees around the base of the tower, with signs along the trail asking to respect their presence and not to touch them. I hope taking photos of them is a way of respecting them...

Remnants of the old ladder (within the larger shaded crevasse to the right)

 

After we completed our trail around the base, after my own personal Roy Neary had obsessed about rocks and aliens and humongous space ships and their possible landing sites, we stopped at the small visitor center where I threatened to embarrass my husband by asking the ranger on duty where the Close Encounters exhibit was. There was none. No mention of the movie at all in the visitor center. We were, however, to find out much later there was a general store outside the park boundary that had a collection of movie memorabilia and DVDs and showed the movie in its entirety every night at 7 pm. Lucky for one of us we didn't know that at the time...

Movie...

Not movie...

* For all the punctuation police out there who have been grinding their teeth, it is, in fact, officially “Devils Tower” and not “Devil's Tower”. When the area was declared a National Monument in 1906, the proclamation inadvertently left out the apostrophe. The National Park Service continues to use “Devils Tower” as the official name.

I know this sounds crazy, but ever since yesterday on the road, I've been seeing this shape. Shaving cream, pillows... Dammit! I know this. I know what this is! This means something. This is important. - Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind

My husband, the night before the Devils Tower trip...

I guess you've noticed something a little strange with Dad. It's okay, though. I'm still Dad. - Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Too close selfie or alien beings?

Next:

On the Presidential Trail

The Trip – Day 19 Part II

Gillette, Wyoming – Rapid City, South Dakota

Devils Tower, Mt. Rushmore

170 miles