It seemed fitting to end my journey just west of where some of my first stops began. Labor Day weekend 2015, I began my journey, loading up my car with a weekends worth of belongings and my dog, Zoey, to head west and visit Mount Rushmore, Badlands and other South Dakota spots.

After a wild fire prevented us from visiting Grand Tetons while in Yellowstone, we opted to go home via Devils Tower, which sat just a little too far away on my last trip this way.

While Yellowstone is the nation’s first National Park, Devil’s tower was the first National Monument, a nice capstone for my journey that had taken me to parks, monuments, battlefields and trails from sea to shining sea.

We drove straight from Yellowstone, arriving just as the sun set on the stunning monument. As we approached you could see the outline of the tower standing powerfully against the pink sky. We woke up in the park’s campground along with other explorers heading up to the monument. Another impressive geological masterpiece, the tower appeared to burst up from the ground toward the sun. The site is held sacred to many Native Americans and legend has it that the columns were formed from the claws of a giant bear. Rock climbers are allowed on the tower and we spotted two groups of climbers midway up on the tower and others headed up, beginning their own national park adventure.