At Mount Rushmore this personable, though somewhat masculine and overweight, lady approached us to take our photo. She claimed to be working for Kodak (but we suspect the FBI as her ID badge said she was J. Edgar Hoover). Here is a cliche photo of her taking a photo of us.

She claimed that our photo would most certainly not end up on the Internet. We offered no such assurances.

Then we were off to Wyoming to see Devils Tower, about 120 miles away. There was much wildlife along the way, but none you were allowed to eat without license, nor ride without proper safety gear. We noted that we were only 39 miles from Montana, but wheenied out on that additional side trip. We arrived at Devils Tower too late in the day for climbers.

Devils Tower looks pretty large until you see it with a mothership hovering over it or someone actually stand right in front of it.

As you can see it's only inches taller than Nate, like a prop from the movie "This is Spinal Tap" . Believing we had been duped, we left without further incident.

By the time we got back to the motel in Rapid City it was 10:20 p.m. We went to bed a few minutes later and got a solid nine sleep. We were back on the road a half hour after that. It was June 12, 2002, but still no birthday for Dave.