It all began back in December of 2018 when I started dreaming up this trip. I knew where I wanted to go and where I wanted to camp the first night. It was a terrific plan. We would camp at Ayres Natural Bridge Park near Douglas, Wyoming…a perfect 500 mile, 8 hour drive to a neat little campground with its’ own geologic feature.
Fast forward to May 29, 2019. I thought I should call to make sure this first-come, first-served campground was actually open. I also wanted to make sure it wasn’t already full.
Mother Nature had been having a busy spring, with many storms that caused flooding, and Ayres Natural Bridge Park was under water…about a foot of it! They had to evacuate the night before and were not allowed to open the park again until the water receded. Darn! I had read that their vault toilets were the best decorated vault toilets ever seen, so I had high hopes for the place!
I continued prepping for the trip well into the night, knowing in the back of my mind that I didn’t have a place to camp on the first night. When I crawled into bed at 2am, I scoured the camping apps on my phone to look for ideas. I could camp at the Badlands or in the Black Hills. The Badlands weren’t far enough down the road, so I looked at the weather radar app for the Black Hills…areal flood warnings. Ugh! I did not know where any of the closed roads were located, but I decided that we needed to look for higher ground.
I wanted to visit Casper, Wyoming on this trip, so I plugged that into Apple Maps and it showed a route through Gillette, Wyoming that wasn’t too much further than my original route. There were a handful of National Forest Service campgrounds along the way, but a comment in one of the reviews caught my eye…Devils Tower was not that far away! I had always wanted to camp there again!
We had camped at Devils Tower KOA on a shorter Black Hills road trip in 2011, and spent our second night ever in the Eureka! Sunrise. That was also the trip where we learned to never leave our sleeping gear in the tent while we’re off exploring, especially not with the windows zipped open. It rained, hailed, and snowed while we were driving back to the campground after a trip to the park’s visitor center. We spent that entire evening drying sleeping bags and pillows, in exchange for a lot of quarters.
I quickly downloaded the KOA app and searched for Devils Tower. They had primitive tent sites left! I had found my campground and could finally go to sleep.
Day One
Thursday, May 30, 2019
After scouring the internet for a campground until almost 3am, I decided to sleep in. Unfortunately, it was bright and sunny when I woke up at 7:45, so there was no going back to sleep. I had bought $45 worth of fruit to go along, so I got up and started washing, cutting and bagging my fruit collection. Two hours later…I had baggies of washed apples, pears and grapes, plus cucumber slices and cantaloupe scoops…and I had watermelon sticks! I do not know what possessed me to purchase watermelon to cut up as a road trip snack, but it was the first and last time. I also have no idea why I saved this task until the morning of the trip!
I spent way more time that I would’ve liked bagging up snacks for the road. We also brought along beef jerky, summer sausage, and beef sticks, along with several varieties of cheese that needed to be cut up and bagged. I made a last-minute batch of monster cookie balls, too. You would think that food was not available along the way! Noon came and went, as did one and two, as well. We finally got the truck all loaded up and we were on our way at 3pm. As always, I was thankful we’d gain an hour along the way!
We made a quick pit stop at Menards for some jeans for Joey. It was the only place I knew that would have his size and he needed another pair. Luckily, they had the kind we wanted and we found another style on clearance. SCORE!
Thinking Putty
The drive across South Dakota is not the most exciting drive for us, so we amuse ourselves by counting the Wall Drug Store signs or playing the memory game where you each take turns adding a new thing you’re taking to somewhere and everyone has to remember the order of all the things. Megan also keeps track of license plates and the towns we drive through. They both bring a couple books to read and we bring two cans of Crazy Aaron’s Thinking Putty.
Joey has a green and gold iridescent one called Super Oil Slick and Megan has a purple and blue iridescent one called Super Scarab. The Super Scarab was apparently inspired by the scarab beetle. Sadly, the Super Oil Slick one is no longer sold, so I can’t link it, but I don’t think it looks like an oil slick. I picked it because it was blend of John Deere tractor colors.
We’ve taken our Thinking Putty along on road trips since 2012. When I pulled the cans out of the closet today to have a look at the names, and play with the putty, it feels exactly like when I bought it. The weirdest part about this stuff is that it sort of shape shifts into whatever space it’s left in, so it’s definitely not for little kids who might not take care of it, but my big kids always had a lot of fun playing with it. It’s not a cheap substance at $15 a can, but considering that I can still play with it twelve years after buying it, I think it was worth the price.
If I’ve compelled anyone to buy some, my tip is to store the can in a ziploc bag. You’ll thank me later.
Culver’s Kids’ Meals
We pressed on through several 65mph construction zones, stopping for gas in Wall and for Culver’s in Rapid City. I don’t believe I have written about our love of a Culver’s Kids’ Meal…a trick I learned from a friend of mine.
We always order the butterburger with cheese, fries, and root beer with no ice. You can also get them with chocolate milk. Megan orders her burger plain, Joey adds pickles, and I add lettuce and tomato. The price has gone up like everything else, but back then, we could get this delight of a meal for $5.29 each. The best part of this deal is that there are two tokens on the side of the bag, one of which is for a free scoop of frozen custard. We used the free scoop to get the flavor of the day, which was peanut butter salted caramel. Yummy! The other token is called a Scoopie Token and when you collect ten of them, you get a free kids’ meal!
Even though the price keeps going up, they are still the best value in fast food, especially when you can get a free meal after buying ten of them. I’m pretty sure the burgers are regular sized burgers, plus they let you add toppings, although they do charge me 30¢ extra for my lettuce and tomato. The fries and drink are smaller, but when you get a frozen custard with it, what’s not to love? It’s mostly a midwest chain, though, so it’s our only fast food stop on a road trip to the west. After grabbing our kids’ meals to go, we still had another almost two hours to drive.
The sun was sinking low in the sky when we turned on to the road to Devils Tower. We all watched out for deer because there were so many loitering along the sides of the curvy road. We arrived at the KOA by 9:15 and found a nice spot in the tent area, with just enough light available for a few photos from our campsite. It was actually a little lighter than the photo below.
After a very long day, it was nice to finally be set up for our first night on the road. The beginning of the trip was not exactly how I had envisioned it back in December, but it felt good to be back in our tent again, ready for a new adventure to begin.
To celebrate our arrival, we snacked on those watermelon sticks I cut up before we left. We had to eat them outside because they were so juicy. Never again…
I have around 500 photos queued up to share from this 12-day road trip, so be sure to subscribe to find out where our adventures take us!