After passing through Deadwood early in the morning, we settled in for a day on the road as we headed out of South Dakota. We only had one planned stop in Wyoming -- Devils Tower, seated a half-hour off the interstate just after crossing the border. The national monument has been a prominent feature of the local landscape (and folklore) for centuries, but is better known more recently for playing a role in Close Encounter of the Third Kind. In fact, the gift shops in the area sell a lot of trinkets featuring little green men and words like "taken" and "probed." We opted against heading directly to the monument and settled for some nice vistas from afar instead.
After that, it was back onto the interstate and off toward the more rural highways.
Before we left New York, Roy and I had sketched out a rough idea of most of the trip. Our next real destination after Devils Tower was the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, which meant we'd be only passing through Wyoming. Given that we had to split the drive across two days, however, this also meant we could do a little exploring. Happenstance allotted one of the final gigs I worked in New York to be with an actor whose wife grew up in Wyoming (a fact which, coincidentally, I only learned when I overheard him recounting a recent road trip they'd taken through her home state). Opportunity doesn't really knock any harder than that, so I asked for -- and he very graciously obliged to pass along -- her suggestions for some of the more scenic routes to take.
Wyoming, as it turns out, is gorgeous. And this is just what I was able to see from the window of the car.
This place, this land -- it's worth seeing.
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