Today we are heading to Devil’s Tower first, then on to Rapid City with stops at Deadwood and Sturgis along the way. Devil’s Tower is a large “igneous intrusion”  it stands 867 feet tall and pushes up from a pine/spruce forest above the grasslands, there are no other rock formations around it looks rather odd but still kind of cool.

The whole rock is fractured into vertical columns – making it perfect for rock climbing. On our 1.3 mile hike around the mountain, we see over 20 people climbing up the impossible columns in groups of 3-6 people. The ranger says not many will summit it, it is enough to just have tried climbing it.

The roadway up to the visitor center is packed with funny prairie dog colonies, with a lot of people stopping to view and feed them, ignoring the signs asking that you do not feed them, but who could resist they are so cute.

After lunch, we head to Deadwood – a quaint old west town. Today it is full of old hotels and many many gambling casinos. While window shopping and checking out all the historic buildings we watch another 10-minute shootout which was no better than the one at Cody but had slightly better production value.

We cruise thru Sturgis on our way to Rapid City. There is really not that much to see – a lot of tattoo parlors, bars, and T-shirt shops. I guess it’s only really worth going to when a motorcycle event is in progress. The final stop of the day is the Cabela’s in Rapid City where we spend far too much money but do decide to spend the night here instead of finding a Walmart.