Today, I am releasing a video from my time at the Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. This was part of the last stop along my road trip across the west in the spring of this year.

In the video, I decided to have a little fun hiking the 6.5 mile trail around the base of the monument. I fondly reminisced of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Released when I was a small kid, I was taken back to the days of the movie when Richard Dreyfus’ character was building the Devils Tower in his living room.

As I hiked, I wondered where in the heck they shot the scenes around that tower.

I do think I found it.

While I was out there, I longed to find a place I could legally launch and fly the drone to get aerial video and photography of the monument.

In order to fly the area, you must take off and land from outside the park boundaries. In this particular case, the boundaries are so far away from the monument itself, it would be almost impossible to maintain a line of sight with the drone while doing the flying and video, a requirement under the Part 107 license law.

As fate would have it, I did find the boundary fence of the property along a desolate dirt road. I was able to stand just outside the park line to both launch and land the drone. Legally done.

I was happy about it because I have always thought it would be really great to have some drone photos and videos of the monument itself.

I hope you enjoy the video around the monument and also the photos in this post which were taken with my Mavic Air 2 drone.