Road Trip Day One: WY, Devils Tower, SD

We have a ten year plan for our family vacations. That’s the kind of nerds we are. This year’s trip was a precursor to some bigger, cross-country trips that are on the schedule a few years down the road. It was kind of a trial run to see how the kids would do sitting in the car for several hours at a time. They were amazing. Abby was a little whiny at times, but everyone else did great (and even Abby wasn’t bad considering she is only four years old).

In our original vacation plan, we were going to head up to Yellowstone and then over to Mount Rushmore. When that plan fell through, we decided to flip things around and do the whole trip backwards to allow a bit more thaw time for Yellowstone. Since Mount Rushmore was going to be our first stop, I thought maybe we would cut out our stay in Casper and just do a straight shot to Custer, SD. I put it into Google Maps (with a stop at Devils Tower) and the result was an estimated drive time of 12 hours and 12 minutes. It was a sign. Traveling 12 hours and 12 minutes on our 12th anniversary on the 12th of June. Perfect.

We got an early start and were out the door by 6:20 a.m. We celebrated our anniversary by eating Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast. (Am I the only girl who would prefer a dozen donuts to a dozen roses?) We thought the kids would go back to sleep, but they were all too excited to be on the road. So, instead of sleeping, we listened to the first couple of chapters of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, watched Hairspray, and started playing our license plate game. We saw windmills and oil derricks and lots of antelope in Wyoming. Nate got a good laugh at my expense when I told him that when I was a kid I thought that all of the snow fences in Wyoming were bleachers (I never did take the thought far enough to wonder why people would want to sit on bleachers on the side of the interstate). :)



Our first stop was in Casper to fill up on gas. Road trip lesson of the day: Don’t stop at the first Exxon station that comes up on Google. They must know that they are first, because they were charging 25 cents more than every other Exxon in town. Capitalist pigs.*

After fueling up, we stopped by Walmart to buy Abby a floatie (since we left hers at home) and take a potty break. I love that my kids all have bladders made of steel. They are good for 7 or 8 hours easy. We ate lunch in the car, started Evan Almighty, and headed up to Devils Tower.

I had really low expectations for Devils Tower and I might have even mocked Nate a bit about driving two hours out of the way to see a rock. Maybe it was because I wasn’t expecting much, but I thought it was pretty amazing. When we got there, it was nice and sunny. The kids all changed into shorts because it was so warm. I decided to do the girls hair so they wouldn’t look like orphans and found three (THREE!) ticks in Emily’s hair. The weird thing is that we don’t know how they got on her. It’s not like she had been playing in the bushes. We just got out of the car and went and sat on some benches so I could do her hair. Crazy.



We hiked up a bit closer to the tower and took some pictures. We were hoping to see some climbers scaling the tower, but no one was climbing. (They must have seen the weather forecast.) Nate noticed some big dark clouds rolling in, and we decided to head back down to miss the rain. I kind of laughed at how freaked out some of the people were that were heading down the trail. I thought, “It’s just rain.” I was wrong. It was the craziest thunderstorm I’ve ever seen. The lightning was super close and the thunder was super loud. The rain was mixed with marble-sized hailstones that just came pelting down. It was pretty funny to watch the prairie dogs. They were all over the place, but as soon as the hail started they took off running. They had all disappeared into their tunnels within a few seconds. We had to pull over and wait out the storm because we literally had zero visibility. Emily took a little video of the storm with her camera. She started recording after the worst of it, but it kind of gives an idea of how hard the rain and hail were coming down. She also missed the part where Elise was screaming “We’re going to die!” from the back seat. That was awesome! We were glad to make it out of there.










After our adventure at Devils Tower was over, we hit the road again. The kids watched Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones on the way to Custer, SD. We checked into our hotel at 7:30 p.m. It was a long day of travel (714 miles) and we were glad to be done for the day. We made some sandwiches for dinner, took a quick trip to Family Dollar (to get Abby a cheap floatie tube since the fancy one we bought her was too small), and then finished off the night with swimming, baths, and bed.




*I’m a big fan of capitalism, even if it sometimes means I overpay for gas. I just like to get Nate riled up by saying things like that.