There are beautiful rock formations on the route from Yellowstone to Cody, Wyoming.  We were so taken by them that we didn’t take any photos.  There was just too much to see.  We spent the night in Cody (I’d love to go back and spend more time in Cody…. great little town!) and then we headed toward South Dakota.  Along the way we drove through the Big Horn Mountains.

As you start to enter the Big Horn mountains you see all the rocks/foothills are red, just as they are between between Yellowstone and Cody.  Soon the colors change and the rocks are yellow and tan.

The mountains were beautiful but the colors didn’t pick up well in the photos.

Canyon by Shell Falls

Shell Falls

We crossed the remainder of Wyoming and just before we reached South Dakota….

we saw Devil’s Tower.  My mother didn’t understand why I was wandering 30 miles off of our route.  She hadn’t heard of Devil’s Tower and thought I was wasting time.  Then she saw it on the horizon and agreed that it was worth the trip.  If this looks a bit familiar to you and you can’t figure out why then you may have seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  At the end of the movie when the aliens land on this big rock thing…. well Devil’s Tower is that big rock thing.  Devil’s Tower is our nation’s first national monument.

From here we wondered through the countryside until we got back on the interstate.  Soon thereafter we saw this….

I love their slogan.  We stopped for the night, had a great steak dinner and got some rest.