Day 4: Devils Tower, Wyoming

We awoke this morning to strong winds which shook the RV and made us jump out of bed. I grabbed the campground map and tried to find the tornado shelter; one of those underground bunkers I had seen on a campground in the Midwest last year. Well, there were none of those at this campground. I looked outside to see how other campers were handling this emergency. To my surprise I saw families eating breakfast outside, holding their plates, while others were busy packing up their RVs to head back on the road. Some campers were walking their dogs. I soon realized that this was just a normal day on the prairie in South Dakota.
We packed up our RV, tried to outrun the flies as we were getting in the truck, and hit the road again to head further west. We passed the Badlands and Mount Rushmore which we had visited already a few years back.
The drive through the Black Hills was beautiful and we arrived at our campground in Wyoming in the early afternoon. We are camping next to Devils Tower, which is absolutely amazing!
It was very hot here today (95 degrees) with humidity at 20%. I am starting to apply lotion to my hands multiple times a day. We are also 4000 feet up with increased UV intensity, which means long shirts and a hat for me. Just like in South Dakota, we have an abundance of flies here.
Today is also our 29th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated at the campsite restaurant at the foot of Devils Tower.
After dinner, the boys played mini golf at the campsite, while I chatted with other photography enthusiasts. We met a Canadian astronomer from Calgary who showed us amazing pictures of stars, galaxies, and planets he had taken. It must have been hours that we spent at his campsite, completely in awe of his work. We even saw shooting stars as we looked up at the Milky Way. What a perfect end to our wedding anniversary day – shooting stars at Devils Tower.