Day 6

It's only appropriate that M. Night Shyamalan's movie "Signs" is on after driving through hundreds of cornfields in Iowa. It's all I could think about watching the miles and miles of endless rows blowing in the wind. The movie's creepier than I remembered.

My mom and I drove about 10 hours today from Custer State Park, S.D., to Gardiner, Wyo. We were originally intending to end up halfway somewhere between Custer and Yellowstone, but I had a bee in my bonnet to drive through Montana and my mom wanted to end up close to the park so here we are.

We stopped off at the Devils Tower National Memorial (below)



where "Close Encounters" was filmed and pretty much drove straight the rest of the way.

Gardiner is an adorable small town on the banks of the Yellowstone River. My dad's going to go bananas with all the fly-fishing spots and angler stores. He joins us Saturday and my brother joins us in Jackson on Monday.

I was worried when I read Frommers' description of Gardiner as "dinky" but I think it's cute. Mom and I ate Chinese for dinner (which was a huge mistake because we were planning on eating "small") and fled to the gas station to grab a six-pack before making some phone calls, catching up in our travel journals, getting spooked by "Signs" and calling it a night.



Blue Bell Lodge, Custer State Park



Stoney Creek Inn Pool, Sioux City, Iowa

Things I learned today:

When I mentioned my surprise at a Chinese restaurant in the middle of this small mountain town on Twitter, a friend informed me of the following: "The western half of the TransContinental RR was laid by Chinese immigrants. Hello Kung Pao!"

And the difference between antlers and horns: deer, elk and moose have antlers that they shed every year in the spring. Buffalo and pronghorn have horns that they keep for a lifetime.

The Yellowstone River is a tributary of the Missouri River and runs through three states: North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

A foal is a baby horse of either sex up to a year old.

A colt is a male horse up to the age of four.

President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower the first national monument in 1906.