This was an "immensely" long day! It really wasn't scheduled to be that way; but....
After leaving Custer, we chose a church in Newcastle, Wyoming, strictly by it's start time which was 10:30. Our idea was that we'd go to church, be at Devils Tower by 2ish and in Sheridan no later than 5. Well...wrong!!! The church service lasted til 12:15; we still needed gas for Taz, and lunch for Jim and me. We quickly found a gas station near the church and I went inside to see if I could be spontaneous and creative in find something for us to nibble on while riding on Taz.
Now, you must use your imagination on this next part. I bought 2 corn dogs...one for each of us. But...then when I got on Taz, I realized that there was no way I could hold his and mine and us eat. Just wasn't going to happen since the wind also decided to start up! So...I put one corn dog in my pocket...LOL and held the other one and tried to find Jim's mouth (remember I am behind him!) Makes me chuckle just trying to describe this to you! Anyway...we did live through that and did finally made it to Devils Tower around 4:15 with still another 3 hours to go to get to our Sheridan hotel!
What an adventure!
Various Native American nations have their own legends about Devils Tower. Our favorite is the following from the Kiowa Nation...
Before the Kiowa came south, they
were camped on a stream in the far north where there were a great many bears,
many of them. One day, seven little girls were playing at a distance from the
village and were chased by some bears. The girls ran toward the village and the
bears were just about to catch them when the girls jumped on a low rock, about
three feet high. One of the girls prayed to the rock, "Rock take pity on
us, rock save us!" The rock heard them and began to grow upwards, pushing
the girls higher and higher. When the bears jumped to reach the girls, they
scratched the rock, broke their claws, and fell on the ground.
The rock rose higher and higher, the
bears still jumped at the girls until they were pushed up into the sky, where
they now are, seven little stars in a group (The Pleiades). In the winter, in
the middle of the night, the seven stars are right over this high rock. When
the people came to look, they found the bears' claws, turned to stone, all
around the base.
No Kiowa living has ever seen this rock,
but the old men have told about it - it is very far north where the Kiowa used
to live. It is a single rock with scratched sides, the marks of the bears'
claws are there yet, rising straight up, very high. There is no other like it
in the whole country, there are no trees on it, only grass on top. The Kiowa
call this rock "Tso-aa", a tree rock, possibly because it grew tall
like a tree.
Told by I-See-Many-Camp-Fire-Places, Kiowa
soldier at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 1897.
++++++++
"On a motorcycle, you can't really think about more than where you are. There's a freedom that comes with that - from stress, worry, sweating the small stuff." - Laurence Fishburne
Learning new things each day as we cruise through Wyoming,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams/Gramsie
