Rockies and Great Plains roadtrip, 2015 part 4: Yellowstone to Deadwood

TUESDAY JULY 28, 2015

TL;DR - Drive out of Yellowstone into Wyoming and Montana, drive across Montana to the North Dakota border and then cut south as soon as I can into South Dakota, detour a bit to see Devil's Tower in Wyoming, then stop for the night in Deadwood, SD.

Theme songs:

• "Life Is a Highway" (Tom Cochrane) for my drive
• "Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

Weather: sunny leaving Yellowstone, windy and high of 75 in Billings, low of 52 in Deadwood

Rockies and Great Plains road trip, 2015 (intro)

Back in 2011, I was going to be laid off in mid-year and so I put together a cross-country road trip that would hit 10 of the 11 states that I still had not visited (Alaska was not feasible on this trip). My final plan was that I was going to drive over 4300 miles from Houston to Salt Lake City, UT (new state #1), and then hit in order Idaho (#2), Oregon (#3), Montana (#4), Wyoming (#5), North Dakota (#6), South Dakota (#7), Minnesota (#8), Iowa (#9), and Nebraska (#10) before driving south back to Houston. That would have taken me over 4300 miles and at least a good 3 weeks of leisurely driving and stopping wherever I wanted to (but no deadlines).