Devil’s Tower to Billings, Montana

Laura Domela — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 22:32:22 +0000

We left our spot at Devil's Tower View Campground this morning and headed for Montana. I took this photo so you can get an idea of the campground proximity to the tower (not bad):

We stopped in Sheridan, Wyoming to get some gas and grab some lunch.

Many people ask us how we find the cool little restaurants we find in towns we've never been to. I'll tell you. Today Kevin was driving as we approached Sheridan so I opened the Yelp app on my iPhone and did a search for Sheridan restaurants, filtered by highest rating. I found one with great reviews called LuLu's Cafe. Great. Kevin asks if it's the kind of place where we'll find parking, so I open it up in Google maps, click on satellite view, and zoom in to see. It looks like there's plenty of good street parking around.

Sweet. So we find street parking easily and walk around the corner to LuLu's and…yellow caution tape and chains across the entrace. We could see evidence of a fire that had burned up in the diamond window above the cafe sign. Bummer.

Back to Yelp. Okay, number two on Yelp is Oliver's Bar & Grill over on Main Street. Walking distance. Backup plan, let's go. We walk a block or so over to Main Street, and in the window of Oliver's it looks like chairs on top of tables. We get to the front door to find this:

Our method only can get us so far, but overall it's a great method, don't you think? Reviews, satellite images to figure out parking (zoom in! enhance!), what's not to work? Fire, and economic downturn, apparently.

We ended up at a place called Flagstaff Cafe (a little ways down Main Street) and it was plenty good for a quick lunch.

Back on the road headed to Billings:

We'd planned to go to either the KOA (officially closed, but with discounted spots, electric-only) or another one closer into town called Billings Village or something like that (with maybe full hookups, not clear), but ended up at a place next to the KOA along the Yellowstone River (called I think "Yellowstone River Campground") in a full hookup spot with a weekly discounted rate. Looks like they have a strong Wi-Fi signal, but so far we haven't been able to get anywhere with it so we're using our Verizon datacard. Great AT&T service here as well. (There are plenty of people here, and even another Airstream. Sweet!)

Went into town and stocked up on some groceries for the next few days, and picked up a small smoked turkey from the meat market…they had two left from Thanksgiving and the gal at the counter says they're awesome. It's supposed to snow a little bit tonight and tomorrow but nothing too heavy. There's a little trail here down to the Yellowstone River that we may check out tomorrow.

Devil’s Tower, Wyoming

Laura Domela — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 21:06:22 +0000

We left Rapid City, South Dakota this morning and headed for Devil's Tower National Monument. I found an RV park near the tower that was still open this late in the season so we decided we'd stay the night so we could do some more in depth sightseeing today.

We stopped and got set up in a campsite at the Devil's Tower View Campground, did some work, grabbed lunch in their cafe/diner (photo below) and then headed over to hike the trail around the base of the tower. Our spot's got a great view of the some craggy hills and a canyon below:

The owners here are super sweet, and once again, it's just us. We've got electricity but no sewer or water here (we filled up our fresh water tank before we left Rapid City). No television or cable, but we have full bars of AT&T and Verizon LTE (with our LTE amplifier and external antenna). Woohoo!

The diner:

After some lunch we did our hike around the base. There are some cool views from this close to the tower:

Looking back toward our campground:

(Our campground does have a view of the tower, but we opted for a site that backed up to an overlook instead…the view spots are close to the road and we figured we'd get enough of a view during our hike.)

We drove a little further down the road to check out the town of Hulett (which was cute, but mostly closed). I guess the AG supply and the Hullet Museum gift shop weren't really in the whole Black Friday spirit. All we bought today though was a Devil's Tower sticker from the National Park gift shop for $1.95, so neither were we.

I took this silhouette shot (from the moving car) on our way back to camp:

Devil’s Tower – Riveted

Devil’s Tower to Billings, Montana

Devil’s Tower, Wyoming