Day 15 & 16 - Devil's Tower and Deadwood

We headed to Devils Tower today with a stop at Deadwood, SD. Deadwood has a lot of history; discovery of gold in the southern Black Hills in 1874 set off one of the great gold rushes in America. In 1876, miners moved into the northern Black Hills. That’s where they came across a gulch full of dead trees and a creek full of gold and Deadwood was born. Practically overnight, a boomtown emerged that played by its own rules that attracted outlaws, gamblers and gunslingers along with the gold seekers. Wild Bill Hickok was one of those men who came looking for fortune. But just a few short weeks after arriving, he was gunned down while holding a poker hand of aces and eights – forever after known as the Dead Man’s Hand. Calamity Jane also made a name for herself in these parts and is buried next to Hickok in Mount Moriah Cemetery. While we didn’t visit the cemetery, listed hot tourist stop, we

did enjoy walking around Deadwood, seeing the old architecture, having lunch at one of the casino’s and checking out the tourist shops. We passed on the many bars that line main street where the Sturgis bikers were having a good time.

We made it to Devils Tower and got settled into our campsite, we were lucky to get a spot that looked up at the Tower. Devils Tower rises above the surrounding grassland and ponderosa pine forests like a rocky sentinel, it is the largest example of columnar jointing in the world. Although much of the Tower’s geologic story is agreed upon, Geologists have studied the formation since the late 1800s, and today still wonder how it formed. Protected in 1906 for its scientific value, Devils Tower remains a place of scientific study and public wonderment. We hiked the trail that circles the Tower, it is amazing to see up

close and the change in perspective as you move around the tower. We were fortunate to watch climb teams repel down after ascending the tower earlier in the morning. We came across one story about its history, in 1941, daredevil George Hopkins parachuted on top of the Tower only to see his 1000-foot-long decent rope fall out of reach. It took 6 days to figure out how to get him down, finally a technical climb team lead by Jack Durrance brought him down as 7,000 spectators watched. We had our own scare closer to the ground, John went to sit on a boulder to rest, fortunately he looked underneath and saw the diamondback rattler. He sat on a different rock!! You may remember Devils Tower for a different reason, 1977 classic film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was filmed at Devli’s tower with much of our campground used to support the filming.

Typical of the past week, we experienced strong thunderstorms in the late afternoon, one day with predicted baseball size hail which fortunately missed us. Pat was able to capture some beautiful shots after the storms which are included.
Stats: 156 miles, gas top off 36 gals
Weather: hot and muggy with afternoon thunderstorms, highs upper 90’s, low 70’s at night.
Pictures: Scenes from Deadwood, straight roads with steep hills, Pat was enamored with the hay bales, Devils Tower and after storm pictures.