Devils Tower WY - 2023

Our first glimpse of Devils Tower was hazed over by smoke from the wild fires in Canada but still, how can you not be in awe of this massive structure?

The KOA we stayed at was right outside the park entrance. Here are a couple shots outside of the RV.

We hiked from the lower parking lot up to and around the base of the tower, a total of 5 miles. It was great to a look at all sides!

Devils Tower National Monument is a sacred place for over 20 American Indian Tribes. Along the trail you will find prayer bundles on tree branches. They encourage you not to take pictures but to breathe the air and think about someone you love. Although I took their advice and thought about all those I love, I needed one picture to share.

Devils Tower is 867 ft. tall, the summit width is 180 x 300 ft. and formed 50 to 60 million years ago.

The pictures below show what is called The Window. It is on the east side and one of the Tower's most distinctive features.

Here is some interesting information about the columns.

You can really see the columns in this photo.

Another couple offered to take our picture.

1000's of people climb Devils Tower every year. All climbers have to register in order to be able to climb. There were climbers on the east and west side while we were hiking.

The boulder field on the west side was massive. It was really cool how they made a paved path through the big boulders.

On our hike out of the parking lot and back to the Jeep, we had to walk through part of the prairie dog field. They weren't out in the open when we started around 6am but they were all over when we were headed back.

Because we wanted to get our hike started so we would be done before it got too hot, I saved grabbing a photo of The Circle of Sacred Smoke until we were done. This sculpture was created in 2008 by a Japanese artist named Junkyo Muto. His sculptures are at significant spiritual places around the world including the Vatican City, Rome, and Bodh Gaya, India. The sculptures stone base comes from the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The sculpture represents a puff of smoke and its location is where White Buffalo Calf Woman delivered the first sacred pipe to the Lakota people.

Yellowstone Cellars & Winery, Billings MT - 2023

Friday we drove to Billings Montana and stayed at Yellowstone Cellars & Winery. We tasted a couple of their wines and had a glass with flatbread pizza that was really good.

We decided to make some time pass on our drive the next morning so we counted the number of RV's and kept track of the different ones. We started at the I90/94 split in Billings MT to Sheridan WY. Here are the stats, we counted 90 RV's and 16 Horse trailers, we decided to count horse trailers because we were in Montana and Wyoming.

43 - Travel Trailers

10 - Class C

14 - 5th Wheels

3 - Pop Up's

3 - Class B

14 - Class A

3 - Truck Bed 

Glacier National Park MT - 2023

Our next adventure took us to Glacier National Park. What an amazing place and so, so beautiful!! We were able to obtain a pass for the Going-to-the-sun road the day before when they released them, it gave us 3 days to explore.

We were in the park before 6am the first day. Our goal was to get to Logan's Pass before the parking lot filled up. There is road construction going on for the first 9 miles along Lake McDonald. I took so many pictures, too many to post so I will share some of the highlights.

Just inside the park we saw a mama deer and her fawn. 

McDonald's Falls

Sacred Dancing Cascade

I thought this was pretty interesting. 

Bird Woman Falls

Heaven's Peak

Beautiful scenery

In the highest elevations there was still thick drifts of snow

Waterfalls in Logan's Pass

We got to Logan's Pass around 8:30am, the parking lots were full and the Visitor Center didn't open until 9:00am so we decided to drive to the East Entrance, St. Mary's.

This is Jackson Glacier and some interesting information on the glaciers. According to Glacial Geology - U.S. National Park Service, glaciers are masses of ice that are so big they move under the influence of gravity. They grow when winter snow accumulation exceeds summer melting. They retreat when melting outpaces snowfall. To be considered a glacier they must be approx. 25 acres.

St. Mary's Lake

In some areas, the road was pretty narrow with the rocks on one side and the edge on the other.

We saw that you could go down by the water so we took Echo down. The falls were cool and the water was so clear.

After our drive to the east entrance back to Logan's Pass, the parking lots were still packed so we decided to take Echo back to the RV, eat an early dinner and head back out to Logan's Pass. We are so glad we did it! The hike was only 3 miles round trip but man the elevation was no joke. We climbed over 900 ft. in 1.5 miles. The most amazing part was having the big horn sheep and mountain goats come into feed so close to the trail. It was a little intimidating having them so close but they were only interested in eating.

We got back to the parking lot from our hike and there were bighorn sheep scavenging for anything left behind.