Devils Tower & Deadwood
Day 3 of our trip to South Dakota, we decided to take in the sights at Devils Tower and Deadwood.
While at the hotel in IA, we talked about what to get into on Monday and thought “hey why not Devils Tower?” Which led us to think Devils Tower on Memorial day may not be the best idea assuming more people have off and are traveling. Which then led to the idea to see the sun rise at the monument. Great idea at the time, in practice we had to get up at 2:30am so we would get to the site by sunrise - which was 5:18am. Long story short, we ended up with a nice 4 hour nap before starting our day.
The drive to the tower was uneventful other than thinking a deer was going jump out at any time but we made it without incident. We thought the look out points would be further away from the tower so we ended up driving right into the visitor’s center at the tower itself. The intention was to get some pictures further away with the sun coming up but not everything works out to plan. Anyhow, no one is at the guard station that early but you can just drive right in. The site itself is open all of the time and we just showed our ticket on the way back out. After all this, we still were the third car in the lot.
We began our 1 mile trek around the tower and saw 4 deer I think. Or maybe the same 2 deer 3 separate times, I really can’t be sure. They didn’t seem to care about us and were probably used to people if they live in the area. It was peaceful that early in the morning. We ran into 4 other people, 2 of them were there to climb. I didn’t realize this but anyone can climb to the top of the tower you just have to register at the gate that you are going. I could never make the climb but we did find those 2 guys on the side of the tower about 2 hours later when we were half way around. (Yes, it took us 2 hours to go 1/2 a mile…the pictures were worth it.)
Just some facts I read about the tower before we got there:
It is 867 feet tall, the base is 1 mile around
Climbing to the top takes on average 5 hours but someone did it in 18 minutes. That was the fastest recorded time to climb to the top and the guy didn’t use any ropes.
There have been 6 recorded fatalities since 1937.
They usually get 500,000 visitors per year
There was a massive amount of fog in this valley right outside the park which didn’t seem to go away. Once the sun got up high enough it did but it just seemed odd that it stuck around for so long. It looked really cool. From different angles along the trail it almost looked like water.
Once we got around the the second side of the tower it became super windy. I assume it had been blocking the wind when we were on the first side of the trail loop. It helped to speed us up as we headed back to the car. This is where we found the climbers on the side of the mountain. It was so wild to see them up there looking so tiny.
Ok, we finally came back down and on the way stopped at some of the overlooks. We realized that you can see the tower from these spots and it is a nice view, but when we went in it was too dark to notice. Which is hilarious when you think about our plan from the beginning. We also saw prairie dogs. They are so adorable. Being spring, there were a lot of babies. I found this little guy coming out of his home. There had been a bigger one sitting at the entrance for a long time and once that one got out of the way this little guy popped out.
By the time we got back out of the park it was 9am so we stopped for breakfast at the little café at the bottom of the entrance. I had a breakfast burrito and James had pancakes. After being up for almost 8 hours, we were pretty hungry. Then we went next door and looked for some souvenirs. We got a few things and headed to Deadwood. The drive took a little over an hour and wasn’t bad. We ended up there right around 12:30pm to see the town. You could tell it was a tourist trap and even though they made the street look “old timey” it didn’t feel authentic. There were a bunch of casinos but no one was in them. To be fair, it was mid day on a holiday Monday but still, it seemed a little sad. That did not deter us from wondering the streets and stopping at the souvenir shops. They were all pretty much identical and by the end of our walk James said he just couldn’t go into another shop that looked exactly the same. We were still pretty full from our breakfast so instead of getting dinner like we planned, we stopped at a restaurant and sat outside with some appetizers and then came home. It was about an hour back to our place and we were struggling to stay awake at this point. Which was 4pm lol.
We went to bed early because Tuesday is off roading day and we have to be at the rental place at 7:30am. This time we only have to drive 10 min down the street so we will have much more rest.
