The day started at 5 am when I woke as normal, loaded yesterday's photos onto Flickr and wrote a blog post. Having shaved and showered we left the hotel at 7.00 am without any apparition by Seth Bullock!
Our route today looks like this:
For complete details click here
This is the longest day, by mileage, of the holiday, but not one of the longest by travel time as we stay on the I-90, speed limit of 75, for most of the day. We left Deadwood and headed for Spearfish, before long we were on the I-90 and across the state line into Wyoming, meaning Drew now had 11 of the 13 states he is visiting this holiday. 
Turning North from the interstate we head up to Devil's Tower. To the Indian's this is no devil place but a place of trust and promise. A Lakota tradition is that 7 young sisters were walking in the area when a large bear came to attack them, they prayed to the rock and it rose, the bear clawed and clawed at it. This story explains the scratch marks on the side of the tower and the creation of the Pleiades, a group of stars also known as the seven sisters. More prosaically the Tower is the remains of the core of a volcano with all the surrounding material having been washed away by water, wind and snow over the millennia. The advantage of the first story over the second is that it prepares you for the mystic impact of the Tower, I don't think any photo does it justice, least of all those taken early on a Sunday morning. It is an awesome site rising above all the ground around.
From Devil's Tower we headed back to the I-90 and stopped for breakfast at Gillette. We had a McDonalds breakfast. Drew had Sausage McMuffin with egg again while I tried something new; a sausage, egg and cheese McGriddle. I had no idea what a McGriddle was going to be but, unfortunately it turned out to be a griddle cake. This was obvious once I tasted it, but hadn't dawned on me before. A griddle cake is a sweet pancake and so was this. Just not what I would like with bacon, egg and cheese. Worse still the griddle cake had a sweet inside (perhaps maple syrup) certainly not a taste for me at breakfast.
From McDonalds we moved on along the side of the Big Horn Mountain range in North Wyoming. Wyoming is the least populated state of the USA and it shows. The views however are exceptional, very different from those in the Dakotas, but very impressive.
We came to the Montana state line, Montana is another lightly populated state. At the border we were also reminded we were coming into the reservation of the Crow Nation and should respect this land of theirs.
Our next stop was the Little Bighorn National Monument, until the 1990s known as the Custer Battlefield National Monument. This site commemorates the battle of the Little Bighorn, the last major battle between the native people and the white man which was won by the people protecting their own land from the invaders. It is often referred to as Custer's Last Stand.
The Indian Memorial at the battlefield is new since I was here in 1997 and makes a big impression, balancing the memorial at the site.
From there we drove a mile out of the park to an Indian owned and run petrol station and cafe. We had lunch here, I having a Bacon Cheeseburger and Drew having a Cheeseburger.
It was now just before 2 pm, so we left and headed for our next stop in Billings, Montana. When planning this route Montana had not originally been included but I'd discovered it was one of the states (along with Oregon and New Hampshire and a few others) that doesn't have sales tax on clothes. As clothes are so cheap in the US Drew and I have completed our, non-work wardrobe from this side of the pond for a few years now. Being in a zero tax state can mean between 3% and 14% savings. We got to JCPenny in Billings and bought 3 pairs of trousers and 4 shirts for me and three pairs of Levi jeans and two t-shirts for Drew.
From Billings it was two hours to the Comfort Inn, Bozeman where we checked in at 5.40.
Another successful day, a good journey, good journey times and lots to see. Drew did the driving today, he likes 'point and click' driving. But today was a bit exciting for him as Devil's Tower was not the only close encounters we faced:
- It started just outside Deadwood when a blue bucket fell out of a boat being towed in front of us and directly into our path, Drew managed to miss it!
- Later on the way to Devil's Tower we had joggers running on the road in front of us, and this was a major road.
- Later again a rug come off the back of a trailer and crossed the reservation from the other side to ours, this was easier to miss than the previous two.
- Finally an oversized load pulling out in front of Drew and having its tire burst right in front of us showering us with rubber, this time there was no were to go, but while it hit us, it did no harm, and the driver in front kept control enough to pull-over.
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