We woke up to a cool morning, but with the sun shining it quickly warmed up. Having to set up and pack up our tent and everything inside every day was starting to get tiring, and we were looking forward to getting to Grand Teton and Yellowstone in a few days where we will be spending many multiple nights in only a few campgrounds. We definitely should have planned another night in the area based on all the things to see and do, but we decided if we weren’t driving to Yellowstone we would never have even known about the whole area and were grateful for the time we had to spend.
We got going by 9:15am and headed straight to the wildlife loop which started right by our campground. We quickly came across a herd of bison. It was easy to spot the wildlife as we just had to go where everyone else was stopped with their vehicles. We continued on and found another large herd much closer to the road. Some of the bison looked like it was headed to cross the road, so we decided we would continue on so we didn’t get stuck in a bison traffic jam. We visited the nearby Bison centre and had a quick picnic lunch outside. We then heard from people there that they were stuck for 30min on the road due to the bison the day before.
We then headed back on the loop and came across a number of Burros (who look like donkeys) that were taking shelter from the sun under a few trees. There were many people there petting the donkey like animals. Our kids had a great time getting close to them. There was even a mother and a young calf there. There were also prairie dogs nearby.
We needed to keep going so we got back in the van and headed towards the needles highway. The road was extremely windy and narrow in many places. We passed a touring cyclist, and agreed how amazing of a bike route it would be early in the morning when there would be little to no traffic. We were driving through a forest of tall pines, and then reached near the top, where the scenery became very impressive of towering rock that looked like giant fingers. We drove through a couple impressive small tunnels along the route. The route didn’t seem like much initially but became incredible near the top, and it was amazing they had managed to put a road through it.
After the needles highway we stopped at the town of Custer for a much needed smoothie. We then headed out towards Jewel Cave National Monument. Google maps said it was free admission but it turned out you had to book a tour in advance and they were all fully booked up for the day. Instead we visited the visitor centre and watched a clip in their theatre about the caves. We had no idea how extensive of a cave system there as in the area. They had tours ranging from 20 minutes to 4 hours where you had to be at least 16 and be able to fit through a certain size. For the cave explorers they have to spend a night in the cave in order to continue on exploring the system. Apparently 90% of the cave system is still unexplored.
We then headed back on the road towards the I-90 interstate. It was back to the flat prairies. Before getting to the I-90 we could see the devil’s monument out in the distance.
The highway went through some very isolated patches. We passed by isolated refineries and coal plants. We did go through a larger community of Gilette that appears to have very nice schools and school playgrounds. Near the end of our drive we could see the mountains emerge in the distance. We went through the town of Buffalo and then started to climb into the foothills. We went up about 2000ft in elevation very quickly. We just kept climbing and climbing for a long time and eventually reached 9666 ft to get through the Powder River Pass. We had no idea this was how high the mountain range was going to be. The temperature was 34 degrees C when we started the climb, and had dropped to 21C at the pass. We eventually arrived to our Big Horn Lakeview campground. RVs were higher on the hill by the highway and tents were by the lake. There were only about 20 sites in total and we just went to our site that had a reserve sign on it. We met people from Ontario who happened to be camping just a couple sites away from us. The sites were nice and large and everyone had to walk a short distance in from the parking lot. There were no showers but the pit toilets were very well maintained. It was a very nice campground. The people behind us had 6 or 7 kids, and 4 tents and a screen tent set up with a full passenger van. There were several empty sites and everyone was very quiet in the campground.
Trip Around The World 
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