We packed up and hit the road, Lee squeezing in a couple more pictures of Devils Tower as we headed off.
Although I am not a massive Close Encounters fan like Lee, I'm not even sure I have seen the whole film, I really enjoyed seeing the monument and learning about its history and how it is used today. The monument is hugely popular with climbers, thousands of people challenge themselves by climbing up the 867 feet with routes going from "easy" to incredibly difficult on a climbing scale. It is also a religious place for a number of Native American Tribes and as we walked around we saw a number of pray ribbons in the trees. I was interested to learn during our visit that the name 'Devils Tower' was actually a mis-translation of a Native American name from 1875, the name has stuck since despite tribes trying to change the name both in 2005 and 2015 to 'Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark'.
We headed out of the park and towards the small town of Sundance where we then picked up Interstate 90 and headed over the border to South Dakota.
We drove through the town of Spearfish and onto the Northern most entrance of the Black Hills National Forest where we found Spearfish Canyon. We followed the 19 mile Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway through the middle of the canyon where we saw towering limestone cliffs, beautiful streams and rivers and stunning waterfalls. If you recognise the scenery, it might be because it was the filming location for Dances with Wolves.
A short drive down one of unmade roads was Roughlock Falls, a stunning waterfall you can walk around.
We reached the end of the scenic byway and the end of the canyon so we headed to our next stop, the town of Deadwood. Having been brainwashed with Doris Day films as a child, I was looking forward to seeing Deadwood as it was the home of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane (who Doris Day played in the 1953 film Calamity Jane).
The settlement of Deadwood was originally illegal as it was located on land that had been granted to Native Americans however in 1874, Colonel Custer (yep, the same one from the Battle of Little Bighorn) claimed there was gold in the Black Hills and that led to a rush of people to Deadwood and the surrounding areas.
As Deadwood was an illegal town in Indian Territory, it was lawless, prostitution and gambling where two of the biggest businesses and it was not a place to walk around at night. One of the most famous residents was Wild Bill, a famous gunman who was murdered in a bar whilst playing cards (apparently by someone who didn't like being beaten). Initially the murder was not prosecuted due to the towns status as illegal but this led to the town becoming part of the Dakota Territory so prosecution was possible.
As a side-note, he was killed during a poker game and allegedly was holding a pair of 8s and a pair of aces when he was shot. To this day, that hand is known as Dead Man's Hand.
After mining stopped and fires nearly destroyed the town in the 80's, it almost became a ghost town until the local government decided to legalise gambling again. Thankfully they didn't legalise prostitution too but the decision did make Deadwood only the third place in the USA (behind Las Vegas and Atlantic City) where gambling was legal. The money poured in and the town recovered.
Today the town is a huge amount of fun. The buildings have been returned to their wild west look, including prostitutes in the windows of some of the ex-brothels. There are casinos around town but they didn't seem to take over the feel of the town as they are mostly small and in keeping with the wild west theme (at least until you get inside them).
Not far from Deadwood was another small town with a lot of interesting history, Hill City.
This is the second oldest town in the Black Hills and another mining town where people were searching for gold.
We stopped off at the train depot to take a look at some of the old carriages. With a little more time (at least 4 hours) it would have been good to do a train journey around the Black Hills, maybe something for the future. We then headed to the quirky town which although had some of the old western buildings, didn't have the same buzz of people as Deadwood.
Our next destination was the Crazy Horse Memorial. We were disappointed to find that this was a privately owned memorial and the entrance fee ($20) wasn't covered by our National Parks Pass but once inside, we both thought that the fee was actually worth the experience. We watched a short video on the history behind the monument, walked around the Native American artifacts museum, the sculptor's home and workshop and stopped off for a drink at the cafe and outdoor viewing area.
The sculpture was started in 1948 and is still incomplete. When it is completed, it will be the largest sculpture in the World. Although from the pictures it doesn't look like much of a sculpture, we were both surprised at the level of detail in the face. To get that much detail on something so big and so it can be seen from a distance, must take a lot of time and a lot of skills.
The design
Some of the sculptures other works
We left the Crazy Horse Memorial after spending a couple of hours looking around and headed into the next National Park on our itinerary, Wind Cave National Park. This cave system is one of the longest and most complex caves in the world. We arrived just in time for the last tour of the day but after walking around the visitors center, we both decided that whilst the cave was huge, there wasn't much on the tour we were interested in seeing, we have already seen some stunning caves and caverns on our trip.
Back on the road again, it was time to head to our campsite in Custer State Park. This park became popular in the 1920's when U.S. President Calvin Coolidge made it his "summer White House". We planned to leave the exploring of this park until tomorrow as it was now getting late and we needed to build a fire and cook dinner.
We had a really nice campsite in the woods in the tent only area and our neighbors were fellow Brits who had moved to the USA. We enjoyed pork, Devils Testicles and snow peas cooked on the fire by Lee with BBQ bananas for pudding.
We enjoyed sitting by the fire so much this evening, Lee went and fetched another bundle of wood from the campstore and we stayed up late listening to the animals in the distance, and the odd turkey sound.
Campground shop
Some more great shots of the Devils Tower and a sleeping Angel :-) In regard to Lee's obsession with it, careful, watch the film all the way through and see where an obsession with the Tower gets you!!
ReplyDeleteRoughneck Falls were good, I'd have liked a bit more water though to be honest, cool pic of some fish though and very scenic. A lovely photo of you both by the falls.
Interesting to hear about Deadwood, this is clearly cowboy country and cool fact about the origin of dead man's hand.
Lee looks very happy with his namesake station.
The Crazy Horse stuff looked interesting but why have they got so little of the sculpture done? Started in 1948, 70 years worth of work and just his face? They need to crack on with it, Sam was able to strike the pose pretty effectively, perhaps they need her to PM it.
The campsite looked nice and dinner was good, more testicles, you must have made a batch!