We are now in Buffalo, Wyoming, at the Deer Park Campground. Skies are smoky and night temperatures have cooled to something more reasonable that the 95 degrees we found when we arrived at 7 pm.
Somehow this day seemed to be a study in contrasts. The streets of Deadwood thundered with the sound of motorcycles and the crush of people, and the same sounds accompanied our views of Devils Tower. Yet, as we approached this mythical mountain, I felt much as N. Scott Mornaday did when he said, “There are things in nature which engender an awful quiet in man, Devils Tower is one of them”. 
We approached from the south leaving Interstate 90 at Sundance so that we could make the loop back to Moorcroft without having to backtrack on our way to Buffalo. The land rises slowly, with low rolling ridges lifting upward and shadowed by the dark pine forest of this far northern tip of the Black Hills. The road is a good one, and the views open up to the west for a hundred miles of Wyoming space, but Devils Tower doesn’t make it’s first appearance until we are several miles north of the interstate. When it does, it seems small but still not insignificant, even shrouded in the darkness of an afternoon thunderstorm moving east.
Controversy surrounds this vertical dome of rock, even to the geologic origin of the porphyritic igneous gray stone filled with large white crystals of feldspar. The simplest explanation is that it is an intrusion of magma that wasn’t ever really a volcano, and probably never erupted on the surface of the earth. It cooled and was later exposed by erosion. That is the simple version, and there are many others written up in the various geologic references to the dramatic vertical tower.
In addition to the creation controversy, there are conflicts over the name, which has a negative connotation that doesn’t sit well with the local tribes who revere the monolith as a sacred place. Bear Lodge is one of their many names for it. There is also controversy over the several thousand people who come each year to climb the huge columns. Just yesterday a young couple ascended the east face with their ten month old on board. That puts a whole new spin on the “baby on board” thing, doesn’t it! What about child endangerment?? 
If you ever saw “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, a classic and a favorite of mine, you saw this place. It is the kind of place that triggers imagination, whether that of Steven Spielberg or the many Native American tribes who have an equally mythically compelling story of 7 sisters who were chased to the top of a tall tree by their brother who had transformed into a bear. Eventually the sisters were raised safely to the sky, and became the Pleiades, or the Big Dipper, depending on who is telling the story.
The road to Devils Tower past the entry gate (where we used our Senior Passes for free entry) wasn’t too narrow, but when we saw a sign “Large Vehicle Drop-Off) we whipped around and took advantage of it and unhooked the toads for the trip to the visitor center just 2 miles farther up the road. It was a good thing we did, because there wasn’t any parking at all up there and barely any turnaround space. I enjoyed the visitor center, and the proximity to the tower. I could have stayed there much longer, but the day was escaping and there was still some 130 miles to go before we settled in for the night in Buffalo, our destination for the day. I somehow didn’t plan this leg of the journey quite right because my short little hour for the town of Deadwood, turned into three hours of delight and fun.
Leaving Hermosa this morning right on time at 8am, we caravanned north on Highway 40 to Keystone. The town was still sleeping and yet the rock shop was open and we spent some time wandering among the big bins of rose quartz and petrified wood so that I could take back a big hunk of that gorgeous rosy rock that comes from the heart of the Black Hills. I saw several outcroppings of the stuff as we wound our way around the hills, and remembered the huge bins I have seen in Quartzite of Black Hills rose quartz. Of course that would be my souvenir! So much better to get it here right in the hills than down in the desert.
The drive north toward Deadwood opened up a completely different part of the Hills, with deeper forests and less rangeland, more water, a big reservoir, and green valleys in between. Yesterday we spent time in Custer State Park, buffalo country, gorgeous rangeland, and the difference was significant. The Black Hills stretched north, and felt much bigger today than they did until now. I’ll be writing about Custer City and Custer State Park eventually, but tonight this day is foremost in my mind and vision.
Thunderstorms threatened us all day, with huge dark clouds just out of reach, and just an occasional burst of raindrops on the windshield. By the time we got to Deadwood, the skies were clearing and the air was fresh and cool. I had no idea what to expect of Deadwood, but Mo thought we definitely needed to at least drop in and spend an hour or so. 
Deadwood reminded me so very much of Wallace, a north Idaho mining town where I once lived. The big difference was the influx of money from casinos and gambling into Deadwood. Like Wallace, the entire town is a National Historic Site, but the money from gambling seems to give a big boost to the Deadwood economy. The town was lively and fun! After walking up and down the streets I did begin to notice that there weren’t any real “shops” anywhere in Deadwood, just a LOT of bars, and saloons, and restaurants, and casinos, and just a few shops with kitschy stuff and a boutique with diamond studded leather everything. In the midst of this, however, it was obvious that underneath all that was a real small town, with a courthouse, and an athletic center, parks, and some old wonderful neighborhoods. Just like Wallace. 
We wanted to see Boot Hill, or what is now called the Mt Moriah Cemetery, where Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are buried, side by side. Instead of climbing the long steep hill to the top, we decided to enjoy the Boot Hill Tour trolley. Lucky for us, they were dog friendly, and Abby and Jackson were perfect dogs on the trolley and in the cemetery where they sat on the stone steps and slept while we all listened to stories of Bill and Jane, who actually only met once and were barely acquainted! A shocking revelation to me.
Back down the hill we settled in for lunch on the patio of one more very dog friendly spot before loading up and heading out of town. I was so glad that we stopped at the first big parking area on the southwest side of town as we entered, because we discovered there would have been no place to even think of parking a motorhome any closer. 
We drove from Deadwood to Buffalo with the Devils Tower loop in about eleven hours, and it was only 275 miles. I was excited to once again see the Big Horn Mountains, my reason for traveling this way, but on this August afternoon I was to be disappointed. Fires in the west are wreaking havoc, and at the moment there are several burning in Montana just north of us and in Wyoming and Idaho. The smoke got thicker as we approached Buffalo and we could just barely see a thin faint outline of what was supposed to be Cloud Peak, the crown of the Cloud Peak Wilderness and the Big Horn Mountains.
Big Sigh…
We have scheduled three nights here in Buffalo, with day trips into the Big Horns big on the list. Smoke in the summer in the west… I knew it could be a problem on this trip, but so far we have been really lucky. We will see what the next three days have in store for us. Looking at the murky skies over Buffalo, I wished we had planned instead for a night or two just feeling whatever it is that you feel at the base of Devils Tower. 
Category: The Black Hills
Bison, Burros, and a Beautiful Place
We drove the wildlife loop in Custer State Park on August 1
The history of the Black Hills, as with many other places in the west, is marked by the discovery of gold. As a sacred place to the Sioux, prior to the white man, its unwritten history extends far into the past. The pivotal shift, however, was in the summer of 1874 when Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer discovered gold near the present day town of Custer City. Even though the land belonged to the Plains Indians, under the Treaty of 1868, thousands of gold seekers poured into the area and illegally occupied the newly discovered mountains of gold. But that is another story. Sad, controversial, and horrendous.
By 1897, when Custer State Park was first established as South Dakota’s first state park, Congress granted sections sixteen and thirty-six of each South Dakota township to be used for schools and other public purposes. The parcels, scattered throughout the Black Hills timberlands, were difficult to manage and in 1906, the state began negotiations to exchange the scattered parcels for a solid block of land. In 1910, South Dakota relinquished all rights to 60,000 acres of land within the Black Hills Forest Reserve in exchange for 50,000 acres in Custer County and 12,000 acres in Harding County. In 1912, these two parcels of land were designated as Custer State Forest, and later became Custer State Park.
Now, with more than 71,000 acres of protected land, the park is the second largest state park in the country. Now the park is home to a healthy herd of more than 1,300 buffalo, but in 1900 it was estimated that less than 1,000 bison remained on the entire continent. Peter Norbeck, “The Father of Custer State Park”, saw the seriousness of the issue and took action by purchasing 36 bison to start the herd at the park. By the 1940’s, the herd had swelled to more than 2,500 and the parks rangelands were beginning to show the effects of overgrazing.
Now there is an annual roundup, held in late September, where the bison are herded into the Buffalo Corrals and the size and structure of the herd are adjusted according to the predicted availability of grassland forage. Although much of the park is forested, and the day before we had traveled through the winding roads of the Needles area, the southern portion of the park, with its wide open gorgeous rangeland truly caught my heart. Ungrazed by cattle, the native grasses are still dominant, punctuated by islands of forested hills and drainages lined with cottonwoods and elms.
We started our day before 8am, hoping that we would see more wildlife by leaving a bit earlier. The wildlife loop that leads south from 16A is only 18 miles long, but I could have happily spent the entire day just wandering the narrow roads looking at the buffalo, laughing at the burros, taking photos of wildflowers and enjoying open rangeland that seemed to look much as it might have looked before that fateful day in 1874.
We encountered our first group of animals even before we left the main highway, and the fuzzy photo of Mo and I is due to the complexity of trying to get a shot while a motorcyclist sped through the intersection, spooking the buffalo into a charge across the pavement. They can move amazingly fast! Crazy tourists!
Once south on the wildlife loop, however, the landscape opened up, and we encountered several different groups along the roadway. They are amazing animals. Relatively docile by nature, they can also be unpredictable and there are numerous warnings in the park to this effect. Most of the calves are born in May, with most cows having a single calf. Buffalo can live to 40 years, with an average lifespan of 25. They need little care, with instincts for survival that cattle seem to lack. They can survive brutal winter storms and at times care for their young in sub-zero blizzards.
A few miles south on the wildlife loop is a beautiful small visitor center, another lovely building crafted by the men of the CCC. A large group of buffalo were grazing around the center and the volunteer inside laughed with me and said, “Please don’t ask where the buffalo are!”. I guess that is the most often asked question and much of the time the buffalo.
The buffalo aren’t the only treasure along the route, however, with pronghorns, mule deer, whitetail deer, mountain goats, elk, coyotes, prairie dogs, bighorn sheep, many birds, and burros calling the park home. The burros aren’t native in the Black Hills but were used to haul visitors to the top of Harney Peak in the early days of the park. The rides were discontinued and the burrow were released into the park where they have become an undeniable well loved visitors attraction.
We were tickled to find the burros along the southern portion of the loop, and of course have the requisite photos of sweet and silly burro faces reaching into our car windows looking for treats. We didn’t give them any, so they eventually ambled on. I especially enjoyed a young colt who laid his ears back and pointed his back end toward the car. Mo was a bit worried that we might end up with a scar on the Tracker! I noticed that the young ones were a lot more wary of the cars and people than the older tourist- adults.
In addition to the animals, we found several areas of summer wildflowers, including the bush morning glory which has an amazing taproot that can be as much as eighteen inches! in diameter and four feet long. We also saw a beautiful bluestem pricklypoppy, an plant that animals carefully avoid because of its harsh spines and unpalatable juices. Leadplant, found throughout the prairie, is nutritious for livestock and prairie Indians made a delicious tea from the leaves.
Finally returning to Highway 16 via HWY 87, we continued west to the town of Custer. Reading the brochures, we thought the Woodworking Museum might be an interesting “attraction” to try out. With Roger and Nancy in their own car with Jackson and us in the Tracker with Abby, it worked out well for visiting areas that didn’t allow dogs, since we could take turns watching our pets. The Woodworking Museum was nice, interesting, and something you don’t see every day, but I’m not sure it was something I would chose to do again.
We drove back into the town of Custer and found a great little spot for lunch where the food was really great, the service was wonderful, and the dogs were welcome. The Cattleman’s restaurant is touted in the tour books but when I saw the patio I swerved into the Frontier Grill, a place that looked a bit more like a biker bar than a restaurant. 
What a great choice! We then walked around town with the dogs, enjoyed more dog friendly art galleries and shops, took photos of the wonderful art buffalos around town, and topped off the afternoon with ice cream from the Purple Pie Palace, in spite of the long lines.
I wanted to see the Crazy Horse Memorial, and it was a top choice on my list, but by the time we drove north to the memorial, the two hour time commitment and $10 dollar per person fee, and the worry about the dogs again was just too much and the group consensus was to view the memorial from a distance. I took some distant photos, felt sad that it worked out this way, but realized that sometimes I just have to adjust.
Since I didn’t get there, here is the website for something that other bloggers have called the best thing to see in the Black Hills, and here is the mission statement of the foundation:
The mission of Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation is to protect and preserve the culture, tradition and living heritage of the North American Indians. The Foundation demonstrates its commitment to this endeavor by continuing the progress on the world’s largest sculptural undertaking by carving a memorial of Lakota leader Crazy Horse; by providing educational and cultural programming; by acting as a repository for American Indian artifacts, arts and crafts through the Indian Museum of North America and the Native American Educational & Cultural Center; and by establishing and operating the Indian University of North America and, when practical, a medical training center for American Indians.
The Black Hills Work Their Magic
I guess I really didn’t know what to expect. I knew that the Hills were considered one of the most sacred places on earth to the Sioux tribes. I also know that the Black Hills are an extremely popular place for tourists to do all sorts of tourist things, with “attractions’ rivaling almost anyplace in the US. I know that there are those who think of Rushmore as a beautiful, patriotic monument to our country and it’s history, and others who are appalled by the whole idea of carving faces into a wild mountain. I can see both sides, but either way, I liked seeing Mt Rushmore and I like the story of its creation and its creator.
But this morning as we drove west from the Heartland RV Campground into the southern end of the Black Hills, it was only minutes before the landscape began to reach down and touch something deep. The part that made this place sacred to the Sioux had absolutely nothing to do with sculptures or attractions. Mo and I kept commenting on how incredibly green it was, after the dry prairies. Green and yet somehow open. We were traversing Highway 36, east of Custer State Park entrance, and the valley was broad and dotted with homes here and there, and little roads that wandered off seductively.
We had an agenda, however, and with only two days to explore this part of the country, there wasn’t time to follow the seductive roads and go hunting for ghost towns of a bygone era. Roger and Nancy and their dog Jackson were following Mo and Abby and I as we explored. It was impossible to fit 4 adults and two dogs into either of our cars for the day trip we had planned, but we had our trusty little handheld CB’s to keep us communicating.
The magic of the Black Hills I think is largely a result of its amazing geology. Rising from the plains like a green island oasis, these hills are formed from some of the oldest rock on earth, a batholith of slowly cooling magma created granite filled with crystals of rose quartz and mica. Eons later the dome was surrounded by huge inland seas that eventually turned to fossil filled limestone and allowed the formation of some of the longest known caves on the planet. The Miocene Era brought tropical conditions that created red shales and sandstones at the edge of the island. Within Custer State Park is Mt Harney, at more than 7,000 feet the highest peak between the Rockies and the Alps!
There are several roads to Mt Rushmore, but we chose to drive the Iron Mountain Road first toward Keystone and then after passing the monument, we would continue the loop to Sylvan Lake and back down to Highway 36 and home. The biggest surprise was actually how small it all seemed. I guess sometimes as westerners we are used to the vastness of our mountain ranges and deserts, and this island of rock and green didn’t seem nearly as big as I expected it to be.
The forest is mostly Ponderosa Pine, with some of the cooler areas filled with Black Hills spruce. With pine beetle ravaging the forest, the park is actively managing to try to reduce the damage and danger in addition to creating good conditions for the restoration of the hardwood forests that are being encroached on by the pine. Much as juniper encroaches on grasslands in the west, the pines take over the hardwood forests when there isn’t any natural thinning process allowed. Our relationship with the natural fire cycles in the western forests in changing, but it is hard to let fires burn every 20 years or so when they would destroy all those houses that we now have in the middle of the forest.
The Iron Mountain road is only a few miles long, but it is winding and twisty, steep, and punctuated with tight, low tunnels and curved bridges. It was an exciting drive, made more so by the sound of thunderous motorcycles all along the way. The Black Hills are famous for lots of reasons, and the big Sturgis Motorcycle Rally held the first week in August is definitely one of them. Of course, even with the rally another week away, the area is filled with bikers from all over the country, and probably from other countries as well.
We did know that the actual Mt Rushmore monument area was a huge concession charging $11.00 to park (no senior park pass honored) and see the walk of flags, to read about the carving of the faces, to see it all up a bit more closely. None of us really cared to do all that, and decided early that we would bypass the visitor center in favor of the great views through the tunnels and from high vantage points along the highway. I must say that as we passed the bumper to bumper backed up traffic trying to enter the parking lot we were incredibly glad that we had made that decision!
This morning, we had started our day with a big leisurely camping breakfast, and somehow didn’t think to pack a picnic for the rest of the day. Yeah, I know…what were we thinking?? We decided to try to find groceries in Keystone, but that was funny, and after driving through the Disneyesque town from one end to the other, we were relegated to a gas station food stop, where they told us the nearest groceries were 11 miles away. Picnic fare turned out to be a couple of apples, some orange juice, and string cheese, which was just fine. Mo and I were tired of eating anyway…seriously….the last week has been filled with way too much food!
After we threaded our way past all the cars trying to get into the monument visitor center, we continued west toward Horsethief Lake, thinking we might stop there for a doggie swim or a walk. The traffic was a bit daunting, and from what we could see from the road, that little lake wasn’t very inviting. Instead, we decided to continue on to Sylvan Lake. I recently re-read Sherry’s blog about their visit to this area last fall and decided that Sylvan Lake would be worth taking the kayaks down from the top of the car.
Again, once we actually arrived, I was surprised at how small it was. The traffic was tight, the parking lots almost full, but we managed to find a spot close to the water, and after a bit of waiting we even found an open picnic table under a shady tree. The sun was brilliant, the skies were perfectly blue, and the crowds didn’t seem to be much of a problem either, once we settled in. Taking turns by pairs in the kayaks worked out perfectly, and the four of us with our two dogs spent the rest of a beautiful afternoon enjoying one of the prettier places we have seen lately..
There were lots of kids swimming and climbing on rocks and sunning and diving into the cool water. The lake is surrounded by vertical granite pinnacles, and it seemed that no matter where you looked, there would be a kid or two silhouetted against the sky high on a rounded dome.
As the afternoon wore on, we decided it was time to make our way home and we loaded up the kayaks, the dogs, turned on the radios and continued southeast along the Needles Highway. In no time, we were once again on an incredibly narrow road and were going through even more narrow tunnels until suddenly we were at something called “The Eye of the Needle” and cars were parked in all directions and jammed up waiting for a turn to get through the smallest tunnel of all. Mo and I saw several mirrors almost scrape the walls of the tunnel on some of the bigger vehicles coming through. That thing is tiny!! We were really glad we were in small cars and even then I worried about the kayaks.
The Needles part of Custer State Park is fascinating and gorgeous, and there are even some turnouts where you could enjoy the views, but with all the traffic we weren’t too inclined to stop. Farther down the road we saw a Dall sheep, and then a lone buffalo who refused to even raise his head while folks crawled by snapping his photo. I would love to come to this place sometime when it wasn’t quite so full of cars and people because it really IS beautiful. But that is the part that was expected, the traffic and the people and the hot weather. After all, it IS late July in one of the most popular places in the west and of course I knew what to expect.
What I didn’t know is how truly lovely the granite spires would be or just how breathtaking the views and how fresh that dry pine air would smell. We ended the drive with a visit to the visitor center built by the CCC, one more marvel of amazing workmanship and stately beauty. The CCC employed 29,000 workers just from South Dakota and contributed more than 6 million dollars to the local economy. I’ll not get political here, but every single one of us here in the US benefits from the beautiful work of the CCC.
By the time we got back to camp, the skies were looking stormy and the winds were coming up enough to make opening the doors to our rigs a bit challenging. Roger grilled chicken and Nancy and I made a big salad and we convened at their roomy table for four to enjoy our dinner protected from the crazy winds. No time to enjoy the swimming pool tonight.
Tomorrow we will be off to a different part of Custer State Park, and instead of a lake day, it will be somewhat of a town day as we explore Custer and some of those “attractions” that I mentioned earlier.
Our little day trip loop around the hills was a short and curvy 75 miles of fun. A is Hermosa, B is Keystone, and C is Sylvan Lake
The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales 