193: last day of the road trip portion of our trip

Day 4:

 This is how Jim joined us on the trip!  I face timed him from all our destinations so he could almost be there with us. He called himself my ad"VENTURE" capitalist. He was my biggest backer and funds my adventures. I am married to an amazing man who, despite being terribly worried about us while we are gone and in strange places, supports my need for creating these memories for our boys. He knows how much I love road trips and to just travel in general. Due to our big 2.5 week trip at the end of August, he just didn't have the extra time off to join us.  We also got to face time with Buddy this morning. 

 The arrows are Jayden and Skyler..where's Ryder, see below..he was sulking because he felt like he got ditched.

 We drove the 9 miles to Devil's Tower..all the while playing the theme song to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It is pretty amazing and just awesome to look at.  We took the 2 miles trail around the entire base of the tower. The boys loved running and climbing all the rocks..which was great, seeing as we had a 7 hour car drive coming up. 

 {there's the cup again}

 Indian Prayer Flags

 This picture just says it all...Skyler's on his phone, Jayden's ready to go and Ryder..well, Ryder is just Ryder, doing what Ryder does best..being silly & sassy!

This was an interesting sculpture given by an Indian tribe.  It represents the first puff of smoke from an Indian peace pipe. I think it framed Devil's Tower perfectly. There was probably more hiking trails we could have gone on, but we needed to get started on our journey back to Denver.

We stopped for lunch in the first big city we saw..Gillette. While driving the streets, looking for somewhere to eat, we saw this fun sculpture of rock.paper.scissors. Again, it's the unexpected that makes for a great trip.  We got caught in a nasty rain storm on the way back to Denver. It was so bad, I couldn't see out my windshield, even with the wipers on full speed. It was kinda scary..probably the worst rain I had ever driven through. Luckily, it didn't last long. 

 Boys will be boys..there were no real shoulders to pull over on, and no rest areas or towns for miles, so they had to make due! 

1,200 miles in 3.5 days..not too shabby!