West Coast Road Trip: Day 3

Day 3:

Start: Spearfish, SD
Finish: Red Lodge, MT
Miles: 397
States: SD, WY, MT

Day 3 started just like the rest, with driving. A one hour trip to Devils Tower was the first adventure of the day. This was another one of those things you just have to see to say you've seen it. I ended up walking the 1.3 mile trail around it but ironically, the best picture we got of it was from outside the park area.

Postcard material.

There was no real destination after Devils Tower other than making it to Red Lodge, MT but we did come across some cool stuff. Like this cloud.

Cumulonimbus 2,000? Shout out to my Harry Potter nerds!

And New Hotness (my car) huffing and puffing while making it up the 4,000 ft climb heading through Bighorn National Forest.

This is only 2/3 of the way up.

The peak was only 8,300 feet or so but I was amazed at how much snow was sill covering the ground. I imagine that this is normal for the area but I can't recall ever seeing snow in June.

Update: I heard a guy at breakfast talking about how the snow melt has just started in Colorado and he seemed quite surprised by this.

And a semi-frozen lake!

As Isaac Newton once said, "what goes up, must come down." This lesson definitely applies to to driving over a mountain range. The way down was a 13 mile, 10% grade maze of low gear hairpin turns. At one point, we had to pull off because we could smell my brakes disintegrating. Upon review after stopping, the brakes were visibly smoking and I quickly splashed some water on them creating a nice cloud of steam. Right or wrong, it saved my car from potentially starting on fire.

Once we made it into the valley below, it was just a 2 hour drive past mountains and lime (the mineral) plants to get to Red Lodge. The resort we ended up staying at was pretty awesome as it was surrounded by mountains on all sides and the very loud Rock "Creek" for a view out of the window.

Upcoming: Beartooth Highway and a bunch of nature shit in Yellowstone.

Quotes of the day: "I don't know what the big deal is. It's just a big rock." 10 minutes later. "You know what, that is kind of cool." Debbie on Devils Tower

P.S. There might not be a post tomorrow morning as we may drive through the night.