Spearfish Canyon, SD

Spearfish campground view


Devils Tower WY -- first national monument

Climbers on Devil's Tower


Deadwood, SD


Shootout play act in mainstreet Deadwood, SD

(Spearfish Canyon, SD July 16, 2010) We left the Mount Rushmore area and drove to Spearfish Canyon to camp for a couple of days. This is a beautiful area and the campground was really nice and quiet with just the sound of the creek lulling us to sleep at night. About 4 miles up the canyon from where we camped scenes from the movie "Dances With Wolves" were filmed.

We took a short trip across into Wyoming to see Devil's Tower which was pretty cool. We hiked the mile and a quarter around the base of it and were able to see about 6 people attempting to climb it. There are science reasons the Tower is formed liked it is, but we liked the Indian story that a giant grizzly clawed the column from top to bottom, hence the long sharp columns that appear somewhat uniform from top to bottom.

From there we drove to Deadwood, Wyoming where Wild Bill Hickock was killed. We hiked the mile uphill to the cemetery where he, Calamity Jane and Seth Bullock are all buried. It's pretty much a tourist trap town and we didn't stay long but we did stay long enough to see the traditional street gunfight demonstration.