Headed into Wyomin'

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Saturday, July 16th

Today I left Custer State Park and headed to Spearfish Canyon. Took some pictures of the area and had a picnic lunch before heading to Wyoming to visit Devils Tower. (Note, Devils not Devil’s) There I took the hike around the base and it reminded me a lot of Uluru – First of all, huge monolith, but also that the native people have a large connection to the site. Throughout the month of June, climbers are discouraged from climbing the monument then, and there are lots of prayer ribbons and shawls along the trail. At Uluru it’s very similar, there are some places where you’re not to take photographs because of its spiritual significance, and you’re always asked not to climb it (but of course people do).

So after all that, it was getting pretty late in the afternoon, but I just had a short jaunt over to Cody, WY. It’s a 5 hour drive, but no big deal, I can do that pretty quickly. Of course I just punched in the address to Jeeves (my GPS) and was on my way.

Now this is a good example of how little I prepared for the trip (And how bad I am at geography). I’m enjoying the nice drive over to Cody when some mountains/hills start appearing before me. Beautiful! And then all of the sudden I realize, I’m going UP those mountains. Awww shite. Reminder here that I’m afraid of heights. Cue clenched hands, sweaty response, dry, wide eyes, and the mantra, “just stay on the road, just stay on the road, just stay on the road.” It ended up being a beautiful drive, but one of the scariest drives I’ve ever done.

All of this took extra time, I think I added a whole hour on to the trip. I had a hotel reservation for the night, but of course I started worrying that no one would be there when I got there, they gave my room away etc. Again, none of these things happened, although I did get to the hotel a half hour before the office closed. And for that half hour, the owner of the hotel talked to me. You’d think she was the one travelling alone.

She commented that she was happy to see more women travelling alone and that she’s “not a feminist” but is glad that women are discovering that they don’t need a man to do things. {I’m going to let the, not a feminist line, slide since this is a travel blog). Then we started talking about the bear attacks, and how people are just stupid. A couple of the questions she’s been asked : What time do they let the animals out? Where can you go to buy food for the animals? I read somewhere else that once a woman wanted her small child to feed the bears so she covered her kid’s hand in honey. Not surprisingly, it ate everything, hand included.

Also she gave me more details on the attack that happened right before I came (although the details could not be true), that the people came across the grizzly and initially it turned around and went back into the woods, and it only attacked after they pursued it, and then RAN away. (You’re NEVER to do that).
Anyhow, I was very happy to check into a hotel, take my first shower since Wednesday and upload some pictures, etc.

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